Koyaanisqatsi. Hopi for "life out of balance," a word that is only known to many because of a particular movie of the same name. It's not that technology drives our lives out of balance; far from it. It is when technology supercedes everything else. Serial Experiments: Lain. Ghosts in the shell. Living in the circuitry. A holy silicon wafer.
So many posts in this thread use the excuse, "We will be buying a 2-year plan for a phone we have to have anyway, might as well get this one," or "A phone is something you use everyday anyway, might as well be a good one," when these statements blind users to the fact that a phone isn't always necessary. I must be the only person reading this thread without a smart phone. Am I saying, "Look at me, I don't need it?" It's not that I don't need it; I choose to live without it. Am I dysfunctional for not wanting a phone? Probably. Yet our relationship with technology has blurred the line between natural being and artificial machines.
Communication is an integral part of the human condition and required for emotional links to our family and friends. Yet, comments and phones like these remind me of technological pornography: an addiction designed to rub you all the right ways. These phones remind me of substance abuse. It is good to have a phone, of course it is... but there must be a limit between use and abuse. There is now a generation that has never lived without smart phones, who have never lived without the Internet, a generation of people dependent on electrons pushed through never-ending wires, eternal radio transmissions, an endless vista of pure silicon and gleaming metals. The amount of information overload in our society is staggering, and this double-edged sword will continue to whet and sharpen... but when will it actually sever and separate the truth from fiction?
A book called Brave New World postulated that in the future there will be so much information that the powers that be will be able to control the masses through things they like, not things they fear. The amount of data that is processed through our heads has reached a point where we have difficulty distinguishing fantasy from reality, what is trivial from what is important, what is true from what is false. Objects bubble up in the maelstrom into the awareness of the public consciousness, then quickly sink and fade into obscurity: Ruby Ridge and Waco are the first things that come to mind. Things happen and then they vanish, only to be mentioned as a blurb in the history books. There was once a time when people remembered. Now we happily drown in a sea of solipsism, engrossed to the point of dissociation.
Okay, I'm done. No, I'm not on anything. I wish I was, then I could forget...
Yes, I'm crazy. I must be the only one.
and yeah, soon I won't be able to resist the lure of smart phone, either. But not yet.