What did people do before the cell phone?  How did people express themselves before Facebook statuses?  We are so involved in technology these days to the point where I don’t know how to even answer these questions anymore.  Text messaging, e-mails, constant phone calls and AIM are beginning to dominate everyone’s lives.  Everywhere you look, people are typing away or chatting away.  I think we’ve come to the point where face-to-face communication is becoming obsolete.  E-Harmony and other dating sites are making it so that natural social interactions between the opposite sex is eliminated.  Am I the only person who wants to just break away from it all?

I am guilty of all forms of digital communication sin.  I text, e-mail and update my status frequently.  But I sometimes feel like I do it for the wrong reasons.  It’s come to the point where I dislike texting all day long and answering my friends phone calls that seem to last longer that they should.  I’m only a digital sinner because I have to in order to keep up with the rest of the world.  It’s not that I don’t want to really chat with my comrades, I just feel like it’s become a chore to type out messages.  It’s a disease that has infected everyone on this planet.  On the subway, on the street, at your daughter’s piano recital and even at a wedding, people are texting like no tomorrow.

Do you remember what it felt like to not carry a cell phone everywhere you go?  I kind of miss that feeling.  Conversations could wait and social interactions felt slightly more natural.  Sure, having a mobile phone is convenient but do you really need to speak with people all the time?  The last time I walked around without a cell phone in my pocket was in Europe and it felt great!  No one was able to keep tabs on me and I was the one in control of all conversations.  It’s a very liberating and empowering feeling not having a mobile device.  Not having a cell phone in my possession made life seem more like an adventure and unpredictable (as strange as that may sound).  You start to resort to things like speaking with the person sitting next to you on a bus or having a brief conversation with a supermarket clerk.  I need to do it more often.

It’s humanity that I feel many are losing from because of these devices.  We can’t detach ourselves from them.  I do admit the only thing I can’t break away from is my iPod.  It has close to 90 gigs of music in it.  Have I listened to all of it?  Not yet.  But I’ve always been obsessed with music, walkmans and stereos.  But the serious problem is how the Blackberry have claimed lives.  Its so insane that people in the subway still scroll through their messages even underground.  If you really look around on the subway people aren’t reading as many newspapers anymore or just staring into space, they are looking into a little 4 inch screen during their travel time.  Unaware of our surroundings, we substitute the wonderful experiences around us with small pixilated images and words.  Should we throw all our Blackberries out?  By no means, not at all but we could show a little bit of restraint.

I was at a show the other night and there wasn’t many people in the crowd.  The people really looked awkward and instead of feeling the full effect of the situation, they started fooling around with their cell phones.  Force of habit or simply out of touch with the human experience?  We’ve become trained to use the cell phone, not only for communication, but for comfort.  It’s an object that makes people feel less awkward, embarrassed or simply less social.  I dread seeing future generations and their attachment with technology.  Although, being from a generation that grew up with a rapid change in technology, I’m still aware of the line drawn between technology and it fully taking over our lives.

I don’t want anyone to think that I hate cell phones or any new form of technology.  I just feel like it’s nice, once in a while not have anything run by a battery in your pocket.  If you do so, you’ll notice a lot of things in your environment that you didn’t before.  Be adventurous one day and go to work without a phone, see what happens.  How many missed calls will you get?  How many text messages?  You’d be surprised by the number of miss communicative opportunities but you’ll also be surprised about how you feel at the end of the day.

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