'Digital age' still creates rifts between people
By: Garret Cook
Issue date: 3/11/10 Section: Opinion
Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, Skype, text messaging, instant messaging, Facebook messaging, Myspace messaging, cell phones, home phones, e-mail, snail mail, fax machines, television, radio.
The list is endless. Communication at instant speed. It is a never-ending 24-hours-a-day, seven-days-a-week stream of words and conversations. At any moment during the day, you can let all Internet users know your name, age, location, significant other, religious affiliation, sexual orientation, hobbies, interests, activities, physical appearance, and what you are doing at that present time. It's sort of sick, when you think about it.
I'm not knocking the Internet. It's helped me kill time in some interesting ways over the past several years. It's helped me find out that girls were booed up before I asked them out and made an ass of myself. I've ordered some really cool stuff via the Internet and had it delivered straight to my door without ever leaving home.
And cell phones. Where would I be if I couldn't have called roadside service when my car was broken down at 1 a.m. on a county road two hours from home? Or received that text message from a young lady stating what a bastard I was for not replying to her text message that she sent me at 2 o'clock in the morning? Or gotten call after call before I can get up and down the street to run an errand, which in turns raises my blood pressure and causes me an overall sensation of physical discomfort as I attempt to drive to Walgreen's to get a roll of Tums because my stomach's upset because I'm stressed out from a virus my computer got from an e-mail?
I sense by now you are aware my tongue is planted firmly in my cheek as I write this. I'm from a town where you learn quickly that unless you guard your privacy rather fiercely, everybody and their mother know when you sneeze. So it was, that I learned to never write anything down if you didn't want anybody to know and to watch who you tell things to.
The list is endless. Communication at instant speed. It is a never-ending 24-hours-a-day, seven-days-a-week stream of words and conversations. At any moment during the day, you can let all Internet users know your name, age, location, significant other, religious affiliation, sexual orientation, hobbies, interests, activities, physical appearance, and what you are doing at that present time. It's sort of sick, when you think about it.
I'm not knocking the Internet. It's helped me kill time in some interesting ways over the past several years. It's helped me find out that girls were booed up before I asked them out and made an ass of myself. I've ordered some really cool stuff via the Internet and had it delivered straight to my door without ever leaving home.
And cell phones. Where would I be if I couldn't have called roadside service when my car was broken down at 1 a.m. on a county road two hours from home? Or received that text message from a young lady stating what a bastard I was for not replying to her text message that she sent me at 2 o'clock in the morning? Or gotten call after call before I can get up and down the street to run an errand, which in turns raises my blood pressure and causes me an overall sensation of physical discomfort as I attempt to drive to Walgreen's to get a roll of Tums because my stomach's upset because I'm stressed out from a virus my computer got from an e-mail?
I sense by now you are aware my tongue is planted firmly in my cheek as I write this. I'm from a town where you learn quickly that unless you guard your privacy rather fiercely, everybody and their mother know when you sneeze. So it was, that I learned to never write anything down if you didn't want anybody to know and to watch who you tell things to.
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