There is a commercial right now featuring children using a remote control truck and a remote control car to ferry a video iPod over to a neighbor's house. The lady, who is predictably dour, is unamused by the prank until the iPod comes to life and shows the self-same children peeking through the window as their faces are on the iPod caroling. I think they're singing Hark the Herald Angels Sing.
Today a co-worker e-mailed me. She works 15 feet from me. This is common. Probably 40% of the e-mails I receive are from people who work in the same building I do. You send a text message because it's a form of communication, without actually having to interact. Those iCaroling children could have been peering out of a quarantined house.
You know the story of how giraffes developed long necks as a way of adapting to the higher reaches of leaves in trees. What came first - the long necks or the high leaves?
Anyone think that our iPods and e-mails and text messages and other forms of chosen isolation are a way of pre-adapting to a pandemic flu or other world wide catastrophe in which we cannot interact with each other? What's coming first: the catastrophe or the relative ease of not interacting?
Hark.
My Wife Almost Left Me (And Still Might)
1 year ago
2 comments:
You know, that commercial bothered me too, but I was more annoyed by the fact that the lazy-a$$ kids were next door all warm and snuggly instead of actually spreading Christmas cheer in person.
And on your topic of iCommunicating, I think its more about the non-emotional connection between people than a defense mechanism or a pre-adaptation to a catastrophe.
The best thing about my thesis is that it's for the best if I'm completely wrong. And if that is the case, nobody will be thinking "Dad gum, James came up with this 25 years ago..."
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