It’s 1992. You wake to the shrill beeping of your digital alarm clock. You don’t roll over to check your notifications because smartphones haven’t been invented yet. You drive to work, Boyz II Men bumping on the car radio. If you get lost, you have to consult the paper map sitting on the passenger seat. There is no Bitcoin and the phrase “among us” has only one meaning.
Life was simple.
Technology has seen unprecedented growth in recent decades. From Nooks to smart TVs, these advancements have swept through our daily lives like Harvey through Houston. But don’t fear — Instead of four feet of rainwater, technology brings us nothing but increased comfort and ease, with no possible disadvantages whatsoever.
One of the greatest forerunners of modern technology is the smartphone. Mobile phones first appeared in the 1980s alongside big hair and the Chernobyl disaster, but these early versions were brick-sized and clunky. Smart phones didn’t show up until the early 2000s. Among other amenities, they provided the novel ability to speak to anyone, anywhere, at any time.
That’s great and all, but I think we can all agree that the best thing smartphones allowed us to do was surf the interwebs while hitting the john. Before, you just sat on the porcelain throne, staring dully at your parents’ strange flowery wallpaper. God, that sounds awful. Now, thanks to technology, we can do the exact same thing while also scrolling mindlessly through memes!
This idea of making easy tasks easier has been revisited with each advancement of technology. Imagine you wanted to ask your buddy a quick question, so you picked up your phone and called them. Zoinks! Now that’s a harrowing concept! Why on earth would you call someone when you could just text them?
The same can be said for dating. Remember in the movies, how the guy would work up the courage to go talk to the girl? That’s so old school — I’d much rather swipe through potential lovers faster than a toupee in a hurricane, judging everyone I see based on looks alone.
Forget chit chat — now all we gotta do is slide into those DMs! Who needs to “build their character” or “learn to accept rejection?” If you strike out, just unmatch and move on!
Social media has helped immensely in this regard. It’s so much easier to keep up with friends without the hassle of actually connecting with anyone. We can tag each other in photos so anyone, even people we don’t know, can have an intimate understanding of our lives!
That’s right — public profiles and easy searchability ensures that literally anyone can view our profiles and see what we’re doing, who we’re with and where we are 24/7! Accountability has gone way up, too. If our parents did something dumb in college, they could wake up, shake off the hangover and move on. Thanks to glorious technology, photographic proof of all our collegiate antics are just floating around in the cloud — forever!
And since everyone can see our posts, it gives us a huge opportunity. Go ahead, post that poorly-angled video of you playing the ukulele! Talent’s got nothing on volume; it doesn’t matter if it’s good, just keep on posting. If nothing else, you can at least feel validated by likes!
Oh, right — the only likes you’re getting are from your friends and parents. Huh.
Thanks to streaming services, we no longer need to wait for our favorite shows to air — loading times are virtually nonexistent! We never need to wait for anything anymore, and if by some incredible chance we do, we can just pull out our phones for some of that sweet, sweet instant gratification.
Instead of spending days sitting by the landline waiting for that special someone to finally call, we need only wait a couple of hours. Patience is a virtue? More like patience is averaging less and less with each new generation!
Encyclopedias are turning into recycle-opedias as people rely more and more on the internet. Back then, you’d have to scour several thick volumes just to settle a bet on the sloth’s gestation period (11.5 months, by the way). The art of thinking alphabetically is all but eradicated as various websites replace encyclopedias, thesauri and dictionaries.
See? I bet you didn’t know the plural of thesaurus is thesauri! Know how I found that information? I didn’t bother to pull out a dictionary, find the page with bookends ‘thermostat’ and ‘thimbleberry’ and exercise the ol’ noggin to find the bolded ‘pl.’ letters. No, all I had to do was Google “thesaurus plural” and there it was! So easy!
Everything’s easier! Thanks to Google Maps, no one knows how to read a map anymore! Schools are removing analog clocks because kids can’t understand them. Half the students I’ve met can’t read cursive. No one needs to put in effort to get anything done so our work ethic and attention spans are shrinking, but who needs ‘em when instant gratification has our backs?
Let’s keep the ball rolling! We’re doing good, but it could be better. I think the next logical step is to embed the interwebs directly into our brains. We’ve got a pretty good system right now, but my thumbs keep getting tired from typing up all those banger Tweets. Wouldn’t it be better if we could just think the words and have them appear? It would be so much easier!
Thank God we don’t have to take shits without the comfort of a mind-numbing Twitter feed. And can you imagine having to wait for the bus without TikTok? Torturous! Our lives are so much better with technology.
Right?
Charis Adkins is an English sophomore and opinion writer for The Battalion.