i wonder what will it take for you to call me?

technology has allowed for many advances in our lives. doctors can perform surgery on someone across the world. you can video chat with someone on a different continent. you can buy food, clothes, music, and videos all from the comfort of your living room couch. but as amazing as technology is, we still have to acknowledge that it is destroying an entire lifestyle.

telephone conversations are gradually going out of style. i'm not saying that no one calls anyone anymore. while landline phones are starting to die off, cell phones are booming. but if you just want one thing from a friend, to ask one question, to remind them of a specific point, most people will just text them. because of that, you dont get the hours of pointless conversation that result from calling for that one thing. you get your answer and thats it. you'll call them when you have a story to tell that can't be done online, or when you're bored and need to kill time, or every once and a while just to make sure they're still a live.

another dying art form is the written letter. when was the last time you opened your mailbox and got something other than magazines and junk mail?? i used to have a bunch of pen pals, and the greatest feeling in the world is flipping through the mail at the end of the day and seeing a letter addressed to you. to know that someone thought of you and took the time out of their day to sit down and write out - not type - a letter just for you. whoever said that emails are the same as letters had some serious problems.yes, it's great getting emails too, but letters are so much more personal... you have to sit down and think more, choose the stationary, address the envelope, take it to the mailbox. you cant send out a mass letter. you can't copy and paste. each one is unique. and writing takes longer than typing anyways. sure, it costs a little more than an email, but 40 cents is totally worth it in my opinion. i think i'll find myself a new penpal over the summer for next year.

another thing that's happened since technology... when was the last time you bought a cd - like a real tangible one - and then never listened to it?? never for me. when you go to the store and pick out which ones to buy and stand in line and then buy it, you listen to it. but i have downloaded tons of songs and entire albums that i never listen to. ever. i download them, get busy, forget about them, and then months later realize that i never even played the beginning of any of them. this would never happen when i bought the cds at stores.

i mentioned the ability to buy everything online as a benefit of technology. it can be seen as a bad thing too. without ever having to leave your house, you're losing essential social contact. you're also losing the opportunities to build up your tolerance for obnoxious people. when you had to wait in traffic to get to the store to buy stuff, you were forced to wait in never ending lines behind that mom with the child that just wont shut up. you built up a tolerance for that kind of stuff. now, you can bypass all of that. great, right?? well, yeah, until you're in a situation when you have to deal with a crying child or a long line and you're so unused to it that it seems so much worse than it really is. you also lose all the small talk that people used to have while waiting for a bus or whatever. you just whip out your cell phone or your ipod and never have to talk to anyone about the weather.

i mentioned in an earlier post how playing video game sports is now super popular. well, that's great except for the fact that you're losing most of the health benefits of the sport and the fresh air and the social contact with teammates. so while you're enjoying yourself playing baseball on your couch, you're also developing your couch potato skills.

technology has also created a whole new language. a language where omg, lol, thru, u, wtf, etc are all not only acceptable but common words and spellings. we got into an argument in a class last spring because a girl (overly pretentious) who was a self-proclaimed linguist refused to even recognize this "internet talk" as part of the english language. like it or not, though, it is. a big part. it's the only language most of the younger generation speaks. sad, but true.

*Birds of a Feather - The Rosenbergs