There was this new fan-dangled thing called the Internet that was amazing because you could send your mail on it. Instantly. It seems like just yesterday that we were sitting on Dad's lap in his super comfy leather desk chair as he explained the marvels of Windows 93 and new games on floppy disk and we soaked it up like a sponge. But you could only play these games for so long. Where we really played was outside, in the grass, running through the sprinklers; at the park, building tunnels in the sandbox.
We didn't live vicariously through others. We lived our own lives in our own time, and sometimes it was good and sometimes it was bad, but it was ours alone to live. We received voicemails on an answering machine at home, and when the phone rang, everyone would race to answer it, and we only knew who it was if we recognized the number. If we were out, we were out, and we would probably call back.
A bat-shit crazy person said once in a movie I saw, "the things you own end up owning you." He had delusions of grandeur and terrorism, not to mention split personality disorder. All that considered, you might think we should take his prophetic statement with a grain of salt. But let's indulge him for a little.
In fifteen years, after all the leaps and bounds, the progress, the coming so far, what society do we find ourselves in at present? An elementary school student without a cell-phone is about as easy to come by as a four-leaf clover. We screen our calls based on if we want to talk to the person calling us, but most times we'd rather just text. And should a cell-phone go misplaced, heaven forbid. What would the world come to if we didn't have cell phone service for a day? A week?? If we couldn't sign into Facebook for a year? How many people would just loose it in a fit of conniptions? I can't think of time previous in which we have come so far and yet, achieved so little. And you can argue that point into insignificance, you can say that we are more innovative now than we have ever been, and scoff at such an observation.
In 1968, people walked on the moon, and by that meter, their projections for the future seemed endless. By 2001, they were going to be flying their cars and embarking on space odysseys. They had a sense of wonder and excitement for that which they hadn't seen. Did they have cell-phones in this future? Of course not, maybe transponders. Did they have laptops in this future of theirs? Please. What the fuck was a laptop? They were merely travelling between the stars.
I was catering an event not a month ago. It was an office party at some tech firm in San Jose, I forget the name. Naturally, I wondered what exactly they did at this tech firm. They seemed ingenuitive, which is to say there were a lot of hard-working, smart-looking Asians and Indians in the crowd. I asked a managerial looking white woman what their work was focused on and she answered me excitedly, "We're developing new touch screen technology for smart phones and tablets that incorporates all of your fingers at one time instead of just one! We have several millions of dollars of investment locked into research and development alone. It's really quite amazing!"
Why? Because it's the future.
