Being the old codger that I am, there are many things I despise about where we've gone and where we're headed with technology. It's true enough that the advances have made many things easier and there are an incredible amount of entertainment choices. But in my view, it comes with a price. Things have become so impersonal and people simply don't talk anymore. In our little mom and pop firm, mine and my partner's office are separated by one thin wall. We email back and forth..too damn lazy to get up and walk 12 feet. I spend my day making a ton of calls to people who simply won't pick up the phone. But you can shoot an email to them and you may get a response.
I admit to texting a lot and part of me wonders why. When texting became the big thing years ago, I used to ask my daughter, "Why don't you just dial the number and say what you've got to say?" LOL, dad...LOL. A couple of years ago, I was at the ballpark with mini snags for his game. We were leaving and I stopped to watch this game for a second because something caught my eye. At least half the kids out on the field would be considered morbidly obese. Why? Becasue going back and forth from the dugout to right field is the full extent of the exercise that chubby little Jacob gets. Where is he the rest of the time? Eating and sitting on his fat ass playing X-Box or Playstation or Guitar Hero. While mini isn't fat by any means, he'd still choose X-Box over a back yard whiffle ball game 100 out of 100 times. When's the last time you drove through a neighborhood and saw kids shooting baskets in the driveway? There are kids all through our neighborhood....but you almost never see them outside. Too many computers and games to play inside.
When we go to the beach for a week, I may catch 5 minutes of TV the entire time. And that's just because Wes forces me to guzzle down cold draft beer in a sports bar with 15 TV's mounted throughout. We got to the beach house last time and Mrs. Snags almost lost it. "I can't log on....what's happening? How will I bookface? I'm not connected to the world anymore....what is this strange place?" How bout' closing the laptop and let's hit the pool, or the beach, or take a bike ride, or meet Wes for cold draft beers?
I know the good far outweighs the bad and most of you younger people know not of which I speak. You've grown up in this social media generation with some new advance to enjoy almost daily. And here I sit, typing to a group of people, many of which I've never met with names like R2D2 and Snaggletiger and G4AU4500. Do I love it? Yes. This is my diversion from work and stress and I've made a lot of good friends over the years. But truthfully, it irritates the piss out of me that about 10 years from now, we're never going to leave the house for work or entertainment or just about anything. We'll just lay in bed all day with some contraption hooked to our foreheads and communicate telepathically.
And no, I don't even know what 4G means.
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