Sunday, May 11, 2008

The State of Connection

As I sit here sipping my coffee, I catch a glimpse of a show on National Geographic. An entire hour long prime time slot is dedicated to a popular video on YouTube called 'Battle at Kruger'.

I realize that our need to stay connected at all times has become the norm, even when we feel the need to disconnect ourselves we often feel that we would be missing something if we did.

Cell phones, laptops, internet, tellyboxes, and iPods in our earholes. If we are not plugged in to some sort of electrical device we feel naked. Welcome to the 21st century.

In recent times, you tube videos have made national news headlines of teenage girls ganging up on one of their unlucky classmates and beating them to a pulp.

Others are of teenagers protesting the lack of an adequate skating park in Hot Springs AR.

MySpace, YouTube, Google, and Hotmail.

We have 26 gazillion ways to connect to each other. And 26 gazillion ways for those whom we do not want to have contact with to contact us (or at least attempt to). For the latter, thank god there are 'delete' buttons for this, as well as the 'decline' buttons on Facebook.

These are the times that anyone can be published online via Blogger, Wordpress, and others. The day to day documentation of the life of Joe Blow.

What would happen should the lights go out? Would we just stare blankly at our tellyboxes or would we begrudgingly engage in conversations with our housemates? Would we pull out the board games of decades ago and drag the kids in from their rooms for a family game night?

No, I dont think so. I think we would wander aimlessly in our minds searching for something to feed it to entertain it while we take on our day to day tasks. We would dust off the books from our bookshelves and read them before we realized the best storylines come from reality. The best entertainment can only happen in real life.

I pity those who are lonely and have shut themselves in to the Internet believing the world is at their fingertips. The information about the world at their fingertips, but the experiences of that world lie just outside their doors.

We live in more than just states of a nation, we live in a state of connection becuase rarely do you meet someone that doesnt at least have cell phone and/or an internet connection.

Sometimes I wonder if man would go mad should he find himself completely disconnected with the modern means. Instead having to rely on mail from the mailbox and having to wait several days for a reply versus having an instant reply.

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