All summer long, people would ask my mom “have you heard from Danny?” They would expect her to say that she gotten a hand-written letter a few weeks back and that I was otherwise totally out of contact eating wild jungle plants and sleeping on the ground. The last two weren’t too far from the truth for a good chunk of the time, but what people were surprised about was when she would say “Oh yeah, I talked to him on the phone for an hour last night.”
Just because I’ve “grown up with technology” as old people tell me all the time (despite the fact that a good portion of the wealthy octogenarians I know have had personal computers, cell phones, iPods, e-mail addresses, and GPSs, far longer than I have) doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate it. As much as I acted like it was totally normal, it blew my mind a little bit that I could hear my mom’s voice going in a North American telephone and coming out of my computer speakers in Ecuador, and then a few weeks later that she could dial an Ohio area code and the phone would ring in Quito.
This afternoon I talked to Mike via Skype chat. He’s in Morocco. Trey sent a text message to Billy during church. Billy’s on a boat somewhere (and the in-church text was about church, so we’ll let it slide). I signed into facebook a few minuets ago and could immediately see that 33 of my friends were online. 33 people, some of whom I haven’t physically talked to, much less phsyically seen in years, and I can tell what they are doing, if and where they are still in school, if they are in a relationship, and sometimes their phone number, where even six years ago I would have thought I’d never have any chance to communicate with some of those very people. And aside from that, my short list of online friends covered seven states plus Ecuador.
Last Sunday I was proud of having been to four church services at four different churches in one day. I’ve had days where I have spoken (as in with my voice: I’m not even counting text and other correspondance) with people in four countries in a shorter amount of time.
As I said, I think that’s completely amazing. And that’s just inter-personal communication. That’s to say nothing of downloading content to my Xbox or having iTunes’ Genius tell me what music I’m missing or looking up the lyrics to a song in spanish when I can’t figure out what I thought was a nonsensical word that turns out to be “para alabar” mumled all together.
I wonder if we are rapidly approaching the oft-warned-of future state of humans existing only in the form of disembodied heads in front of screens that respond to telekinetic input. Probably not. But even though it doesn’t scare me, I do appreciate the technology around me, despite how many old people think I take it for granted (mainly because they think I maneuver through it all so easily, which is totally not as true as it seems).
In fact, thanks to wordpress, paypal, intersabre, domainsite, facebook, and a score of other communication utilities and companies, all I have to do is finish typing this paragraph and click “Publish” and I will start blowing other people’s minds, and my own as I think about at least three places where this will automatically appear and be read by family, friends, and even people I haven’t seen in years. Amazing!
Click.
