Yesterday my mother went into panic mode because my sister
hadn’t texted her in three days. You might argue that this was equivalent
saying “oh my gosh I haven’t had a letter from XYZ in 3 months!” ten years ago.
Only it wasn’t. It was three fucking days. You don’t need to go into a frenzy
because someone hadn’t got in touch with you for three days. I gently reminded
her that had something horrible happened to her daughter, or worst case
scenario, she was dead; our aunts in Australia would have called to give us the news and therefore her anxiety attack was unfounded. To my surprise, this didn’t
have the calming effect I anticipated.
Anyway, the whole thing got me thinking. Everything is sped
up to the point where if, say, your browser doesn’t load a page in 2 seconds
you swear at it for being the slowest thing in creation since turtles painted
the great wall of china[i].
Despite the positive aspects of Everything Ever Known to Man Since Forever
fitting snugly in your pocket, doesn’t this have the negative side effect of putting
so much pressure on us, all the goddamned time? It’s like everyone in the world
is breathing down our neck; watching, listening and waiting.
I remember once I forgot to take my phone to work. At first,
it was nerve wracking; but after a while, the realization that no one could
find me if I so much as stepped outside of the office hit me. And damn, that
felt so liberating. So what if I missed a few calls and a few texts; if there
was a real emergency there still were a dozen ways for anyone to get in touch
with me. Imagine being back in a world where for little spaces of time, no one
could reach you. A little pocket of alone-ness. Sure, you could always switch
off our phone. But have you tried to? You can’t can you. The best you can do is
put it on silent and then keep checking your phone twice as often just in case you missed the vibrating alert.
Technology is a wonderful scary beast. I couldn’t live
without it. I just wish we could slow
things down once in a while.
