Technology = mental instability

Remember back in the old days?

Did you like how I, as a 24 year old male, just started a blog referring to "the old days?" Especially since many people that read this are, in fact, quite a bit older than 24.

Nevertheless, I did have "old days." See, I was blessed to be born at the exact perfect time to have had a short childhood before technology like real computers existed and yet have my adolescence filled with such advances that now people can talk to TV screens (made of what the "new" flashlights were made of several years ago)to make them do what they want.

I'm actually incredibly happy about when I was born.

But yes. I remember the old days. I would walk or ride my bike to my friends' houses to see if they could play, and sometimes they could and we would go put soda cans in our bike spokes to make them sound like dirt bikes and ride up and down hills, or head down to the ravine and pretend like we were whatever fantastical creature we thought was cool at the time (mostly it was dragons) and that was that. We told our parents where we would go, we'd leave forever with no cell phone and our parents generally trusted that we wouldn't be eaten by a rabid alligator that had hiked its way up to Utah.

Sometimes on these expeditions to our friends' homes, they couldn't even play. They would be busy, or taking a nap, or what have you. What do you do then? Ride your bike back home. And that was that.

I remember the time the first computer came into our home, and we played a game where we led a frog through a maze. I remember when I set up my first email account. I remember when my dad bought the first DVD player and I thought he was crazy because what was wrong with VHS's? We don't have Star Wars on DVD! And my parents thought that the Super Nintendo for Christmas was a great idea because games would surely be a passing fad and not something that would carry on through our supposedly adult years.

Surely.

Now everything has changed. I've been in the market for a new computer (and have settled on a laptop for two reasons: one I need to go back to school and a laptop is good for those sorts of things and two we have no place to put it as kitchen tables are generally meant for eating on unless you live at our place in which it becomes a shelf). On this website that does a deal a day there was a media laptop: 17.3 inch screen, dual processing whatever, I didn't pay too much attention to the specs because we decided we'd wait until Christmas is a couple months behind us to look. Well I was reading the comments: "This is great! I bought one of these for my five year-old son because it's cheaper than an iPad!" My coworker is buying either an iPhone 4s or an iPad for her ten year-old son. They're everywhere!

My phone is a free phone, just for reference.

I do much of my communication through texting now. Remember when you had to call if you wanted to talk to someone? Not anymore! You can click a few buttons and it's a mini email to one person they can read and reply to at their convenience! I do it all the time. Texting my brother and sisters, Becky when I'm at work, my Seattle friend Michael, The people that I went to school with who are now scattered across the United States, my in-laws including siblings, my coworkers. All the time. My entire means of communication with these people is contained within a black and slate blue brick that folds into a nice small shape that fits in my pocket.

I realized: I basically just talk to my phone all the time. It talks back to me. Taken at a literal level, I have no relationship with these people. I haven't seen some of these people in years.

Maybe technology has made everyone crazy. We all just have dissociative disorder.