This is a plea to humanity - the Western, industrialized part of it anyway. Please stop texting! Sometimes when I'm forced to leave my wooded home and venture into town for sundries I want to pull my hair out! People, people, everywhere - texting!
The kids and I went to the "big" city 40 minutes south of us earlier this week. We needed to buy some new blue jeans for the kids and I thought I would pick up some groceries. Since it was a long trip we decided to have a picnic lunch at the huge city park. The kids love that park and I was happy to oblige.
We got to the park and I settled down with the babe on a bench, unpacked the food and released the children to climb the ropes, ride the slides and make all sorts of merriment. After a few moments I started to feel very uncomfortable. I wasn't sure at first what it was. I looked around at the busy park and took note of the families.
Fathers and mothers were walking around, hunched shoulders, cell phone in one hand, pushing buttons with their thumbs at a rapid pace. They seemed lost in another world. No one was talking to each other, no one was looking at each other. Everyone had their heads down, engrossed in their cell phone activities - staring at a screen.
Children at the park pleaded to their parents for attention. Calls of "Look at me go down the slide!" or "Dad come push me!" or "See how high I can climb all by myself?" were greeted with grunts from the parents who usually did not look up from their tiny screens. No one was present. It was as if their bodies where all up, walking around but their minds were gone because their minds really WHERE gone.
They were zombies, slaves to the screen. For what? What could they possibly be doing that was THAT important and why weren't they setting aside time to do it instead of pretending to take their children to the park while they escaped into V-world?
We are going to end up raising a generation of virtual people who don't know how to talk to others, interact with others or even just be with others.
Living without a cell phone I often feel like a survivor of some end-times event. I wonder through the grocery store with no other "humans" present. Just ghostly images of where people use to be. I'm the only one looking forward. The only one smiling. The only one not engaged with a cell phone either talking or texting. I've witnessed people who NEVER take their blue tooth head set off! I wonder if they sleep with it on?
I watched shows like Caprica and see the holo-bands the characters wear which take them to a virtual world and I think - how long? How long until that REALLY happens? Or Wall-e? How long until we are sitting in hovering chairs only talking to other people via a computer screen? How long? Not long. It's right around the corner people, it really is.
*Clap, clap!* It's time to wake up! Please! I'm begging my fellow human beings. Show some restraint. Put the phone down. Back away slowly. Communicate with real people in meaningful ways. Please stop texting!
