If I believed in religion, in god and the devil and that business, I would be inclined to say that technology is the devil’s work. In the Judeo-Christian model of ethicality, the devil is he who tempts people into doing wrong. For me, right and wrong are too subjective to even attempt to define here, but I don’t think it’s just coincidental that omnipresent screens in my house impede even the simplest of tasks – primarily communication.
Example: I am reading my book, minding my own business. One kid is napping on the couch. One kid is playing Madden 11 downstairs. She starts to lose the game. Yelling ensues. I hear a noise which sounds eerily similar to a controller being thrown. The bear on the couch is awoken. He goes downstairs and says something condescending about being overemotional, then logs on to facebook. More yelling. Crying. I go to intervene. Both initially refuse to break eye contact with their respective screens to acknowledge that I am speaking. I am calm. I try to get them both to acknowledge their complicit nature in the disagreement. I am told I’m being irrational by a walking hormone. I am yelled at for picking sides by a temperamental child. But I’m the irrational one? Because I want 60 seconds to talk about a conflict?
On a more pervasive level, the television is on CONSTANTLY at my house. They don’t turn it off. Ever. They will leave the room, hell, even leave the HOUSE and not switch the tv off. Why? Are they afraid of listening to the thoughts in their own heads? Are they afraid the magnetic attachment might be broken and they might have to entertain themselves for a fraction of a second? Is it the background noise which is somehow soothing? The canned laughter too much funny to part with?
And yet when I turn on the tv, I can’t find anything to watch. Something like 900 channels of cable tv, and nothing appeals to me, so I turn it off. I am guilty of watching movies I like more than once, but my younger child will watch the same episode of iCarly until she knows the dialogue verbatim. She was playing Madden yesterday, and she knew what the commentator was going to say before he said it. Today, she asked me was a word meant, moments before I heard it come out of a Good Luck Charlie cast member’s mouth. Too much time spent in mental oblivion. Since when did thinking become such an archaic way to entertain oneself?
The constant distraction of iphones and ipods and playstations and laptops and televisions and video games is crippling people’s ability to just … BE. It’s like events don’t really happen if you can’t jump on facebook or tumblr or twitter and comment on the fact that they just happened. And most of the status updates aren’t really ACTIONS anyway; they’re just random thoughts shoved online by an increasingly ADD nation. Flipping through channels, surfing the internet – it’s ridiculous how much of a knowledge deficit people today face, because our knowledge pool is incredibly wide, but dangerously shallow. But it's definitely tempting to get distracted, watch videos, text friends, play angry birds, not think.
I’m thinking that for Christmas I will give my family the give that keeps on giving and shut off the digital cable. At least that’s one less thing getting in the way of actually living life. I’ll take my own advice and log off this godforsaken computer and finish reading my book. Less hypocrisy and more reality. I like it already.
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