Technology will be the death of our civilization.
I love technology, don't get me wrong. I have panic attacks if my cell phone battery dies and I don't have a charger around. I check my email obsessively. DVR literally changed my life. I don't know how people survived pre-internet. I would die without my iPod in my car to match my playlist to my every mood.
But despite my affinity for the above, I still stand that technology will be the downfall of our civilization.
We are so lazy, it's shameful.
Last night, I called my mother to inform her that I had survived a truly horrific final exam. I can only imagine that she was doing one of 3 things when I called:
1. Spider solitaire in her office. The woman is addicted. God forbid should you accidentally clear the high score list, it will get the death stare and a month of dishes and trash duty.
2. Facebook. Yes, my mother has Facebook. And if you post a movie quote or a song lyric as a status update, she will take it literally. No, Mom, I don't REALLY have an anaconda, and trust me, if I did, it wouldn't want none if you got buns, hun.
3. Tetris on the circa 1999 GameBoy that she "bought for my brother" but promptly commandeered it once the novelty wore off and Pokemon became "uncool" upon entering the 8th grade. Her thumbs have carpal tunnel, and don't interrupt her when she's on level 37, even if the house is on fire. Level 37 is more important than 3rd degree burns.
I finished my conversation with my mother and asked to speak with my father, to hassle him about the upcoming football battle between his alma mater and my own. (Go Ags, beat the Hornet!) I can only imagine that my father was doing one of three things:
1. Sitting in his chair, watching American Idol reruns, clippping his toenails, and dumping the clippings in the container where he also stashes the dog toys.
2. Sitting in his chair, watching The Bachelorette, throwing a mangled and saliva ridden stuffed duck across the room as the dog intently stares, waiting for her chance to make a 5 foot retrieve.
3. Sitting in his chair, watching Huntin' with Hank, his computer on his lap, playing Mavis Bacon Teaches Typing. Mavis and my father are BFF, and yet the man has yet to surpass the hunt and peck.
Bottom line, I would bet my life on the fact that my father was sitting in his chair, watching some form of low quality, second rate television.
What appalled me was my mother's response to my request to speak with my father:
"He couldn't find the cordless earlier. Call him on his cell."
Seriously?
Not only was my father unwilling to pry himself from his chair for a slight moment to find a working cordless phone to talk with his firstborn, but my mother was unwilling to walk the 34 feet to the family room to hand him the phone on which she was speaking to me.
This, friends, is what our world has come to.
My parents are both able bodied people with fully functional legs. Still, it was too much effort for either of them to use said legs to get up and find a phone.
I didn't call my father's cell out of protest of this abomination. However, I am quite sure that he would have answered because much like myself, the man can't be more than a foot from his cell or his blackberry, lest should the Queen of England call wanting to refinance Buckingham Palace.
Again, technology will be the death of our civilization. We are going to start devolving as a species.
I estimate that due to email and text messaging that we will lose our ability to speak within the next million years. What's the point of talking, if you can just text what you have to say? The phone call is a thing of the past. It's so 2000. The downside of this text message revolution, however, is the fact that we are all going to have severe thumb problems in about 20 years. Our thumbs were just not built for rapid and repeated button pushing. I recommend right now that anyone going into medicine should seriously consider specializing in hand orthopedics, because thumb reconstruction surgery is going to be highly lucrative within the next two decades.
Thumb surgery is going to be the laser eye surgery of the 2020s.
On the positive side of text messaging, my 83 year old grandfather is getting quite good at it, and I couldn't be prouder. My grandfather could out-text your grandfather. I guess he realized that if he wanted to keep in contact with his grandchildren, he had to get with the times. The technology addiction is spreading like the swine flu from the Gen Y, straight on through to the Gen X, hitting up Baby Boomers, and not stopping until it infects whatever people older than the Boomers are called.
My advice: Do your thumb calisthenics before bed and try to speak aloud for at least one hour daily. Help save the human race.
