Information Superhighway to Hell

I love the internet. Absolutely, positively, without a doubt love it. I wonder how we ever lived without it. We were likely way more productive back in the day but we are way more entertained now. I would also argue that people need constant stimuli now as a result of being able to be entertained so easily, but it seems like a worthy side effect to me.

Just think of the world of convenience we now enjoy. If I so choose on any given day I can check sports scores, watch videos of a chipmunk waterskiing in a pool, order a pizza, watch full episodes of my favorite shows, chat with friends, check my bank account, buy stocks, buy a new car, sell all the junk in my closet, buy a Russian wife, either order a real book or find a book that I can read on my computer screen, buy "embarassing" pharmacy items, download my favorite CDs and songs, see what my kids might look like, check what celebrities I look most like, find out what people I didn't talk to in high school are doing, buy a plane ticket, make dinner reservations, pay my bills, watch some B-List celebrity's sex tape and so much more. All without leaving my place. Back in the day (which was a Wednesday) it would take me over a week to do all of those things, now I could likely do it all in an hour if I put my mind to it.

Throw in the fact that I can now do all of the above stuff on my phone and it is absolutely ridiculous. I can remember rotary phones, it would take over 90 seconds just to dial a 7 digit number. Touch tone phones were a huge upgrade. There was a time when I was quite young that I was the remote control for the television (I thought my name was "Change the channel" until I was 6 years old). When I was 6 years old I could read and memorize the TV listings because that cut down on the channel changing. Oh how far we have come...I'm very interested to see where it goes from here.

Of course it is not all yellow brick road. Having access to so many things at the click of a mouse makes a lot of people unable to entertain themself for even a short amount of time in the absence of technology. There is such a constant barrage of images and sounds thrown at us during the course of the day that we tune most of it out without even realizing it. When all that noise is taken away it feels excruciatingly quiet for a lot of people. Attention spans are generally lower and people need the familar "hum" to distract them. That is precisely why I like to go out into nature for a hike or a camping trip every once in a while just to remind myself of what it used to be like and to come back refreshed feeling more like a human.