It is amazing how quickly communication technology has become a necessary part of our lives. Sitting on the Start Bus, waiting for the driver to collect the tickets for the three hour ride to Rome, I realized that my phone did not have service. What?! No service! I have a three hour bus ride. I have to find a train. I have to sit in the airport at Rome. I have a sweetheart standing outside the bus I need to send a message to NOW, ‘mi manchi giá’! No phone?! No internet? For how many hours? My mind floods with all the people I planned on calling or messaging during this trip. I haven’t told a soul in the states I’m returning today. I didn’t tell many of my friends in Italy I was leaving. I haven’t checked email in two days or responded in four. This was email time, phone time, message time, and now, NO PHONE?!!
I had been waiting for weeks for my phone to switch back from Vodafone to Wind. Of course it switches when I have twenty Eruo left on some inexplicable bonus, nothing compared to how much they rape you for, and when I made absolutely no preparations for a transatlantic trip except packing my suitcase. I remember not so many years ago when you couldn’t leave your house when you had a crush on someone for fear they would call you the second you walked out the door. I remember when cell phones were so big and heavy you had to strap a miniature suitcase to your belt to carry them from one place to another. You would have to pay Ryanair a $20 extra luggage charge to fly with an old cell phone for exceeding the weight allowance. I remember when they were so expensive, they were considered for ‘emergency use only’.
I’ll bet you young folk don’t know there was a time when you actually had to have a discussion before you left the house and agree on a place to meet your friend at the concert/park/mall or you would never find them. There was a time when realizing you forgot your cell phone was a no-nevermind. Now it is a reason to panic, stuck like a squirrel in the middle of the road, mentally dodging between the choice to go straight to the appointment you are already late for or go back to get your cell phone.
Remember when you had to actually go home to check your messages for the day? On those old clunker answering machines? Remember how you’d save that one special message and listen to it when you needed to know you were loved? Back before Verizon randomly decided messages could only be saved for twenty-one days. And, speaking of, why do they tell you this every time you save a message? Couldn’t they just put it in your contract and give you back the four days of our life you will spend listening to “this message will be saved for twenty one days” Really? I didn’t catch that the first 176 times I saved a message!
I wonder, are we any more efficient, any more connected, any more in touch?
While we are on the subject would someone please explain to me the logic of the text message? As long as you have that connected cell phone in your hand, isn’t it faster to hit the speed dial button and have a one minute conversation than to spend three minutes typing in the only writing system ever devised that is worse than the Qwerty keyboard; which by the way was designed for INefficiency – to slow down the typists who kept bogging down the typing keys when they typed too fast. Aren’t we going backward????
Now don’t get me wrong. I live for and love Google. In my opinion, we are the most blessed generation to live since the printing press was invented – which I consider ever so much better than sliced bread (I never did understand that saying, “the best thing since sliced bread”). I wouldn’t trade living in today’s world wide web for anything. We have the world open to us in ways never conceived of before. But isn’t there a way to appreciate it without entering a state of hyperventilation when you realize that for a nano-second of your life you will be dis-connected, out of the loop, off line, unavailable? I’ll send this when I re-establish my link with the world. Right now I need to go find a brown paper bag….
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