Rotary Phone??? You Must Be OLD!

Beginning September 20th through the 26th we are supposed to turn off our electronic devices for "Turn Off Week."  This campaign was started by the do-gooders of America to try and save kids from being couch potatoes, computer geeks, videogame hounds, and cellphone addicts.  Instead, they are supposed to play board games, read books, and play outside.  While the idea on the whole I guess is a good idea, I find some flaws.

We, as humans, are evolutionary creatures.  We respond well to environmental stimulus, adapting to changes in our surroundings.  Or, at least some of us do.  Over five thousand years ago, humans created written language, carved into clay tablets.  We adapted well to this new idea, and hand written language can still be seen in some cultures today.  (This means language written by pen on paper by a human hand.)  Over the next thousand years or so, people used written language to communicate over distances, forming the first rudimentary postal system.  It was probably as dysfunctional and unreliable as today's postal system.  Hundreds of years later, The Pony Express carried letters and correspondence across the Great Plains and the Frontier through the Rockies to the Gold Coast in the 1860's.  Hand-written communication evolved again through the use of typewriters, telegraphs, computers and cell phones over the next 150 years.  Who knew that the room-sized computers of the 1940's would make way for the tiny computers in our cell phones and Ipods of today.  We even have computers in our cars, telling us that we need to change the oil, inflate the tires, and even computers that locate our position on Planet Earth and tell us how to get home. 

My point of this little history lesson is that as a species, humans need to communicate with other humans on a daily basis, and humans also need to create better methods for communication.  Hence the evolution from pen and paper to laptops and texting.  Therefore, by taking away our means of communication that we've come to know, trust, love and depend on, we can become a danger to ourselves and to others.  Have you ever heard of cabin fever? 

So, if you want to participate in National Turn Off Week, by all means, do.  However, don't be surprised when you begin to go through withdrawals from your emotional dependency on technology.  We have evolved to form a dependency on our televisions, cell phones, desktops, laptops, Iphones, Ipads, Ipods, Blackberries, Wii's, Playstations, Tivos, DVRs, and DVDs.  Its like taking away sunshine, or ice cream.  People can get hurt, even killed.  Have you ever gotten in the way of a pregnant woman in the frozen foods section?  I'm the same way with my computer.  If you take it away from me, the situation can get very ugly, very fast.  I was not born to live in the pioneer age with outhouses and horses.  I was born to live in the information age, with the whole world at my fingertips.  I am a creature of evolution.