Maxigumee

As of recently, every time I open my computer from sleep (something I find myself doing nearly a thousand times a day, an addictive action burned into my daily routine), I get an almost hopeless feeling of despair. Of course, there are children in Africa who are dying of AIDS and people in Fiji without sufficient drinking water, so the opening of a laptop should probably bring waves of joy to my over-privileged American heart. But it doesn’t.

Every time I open my computer, I think to myself, “how long is it going to be before you kick the bucket and I need to shell out another thousand dollars to replace you? Or worse, how long will it be before you become completely obsolete? A year?” Or “how soon are they going to want me to pay another $129 to update this stupid software?” The sheer temporariness of modern technology due to the fact that it advances so insanely fast is seriously starting to scare me.

Take for example, my iPod. Right now, I have a pretty reliable fifth generation color-screen iPod. But I know that in probably another six months, Apple is going to release some brand new shiny one and my pretty little iPod will no longer be cool. It’ll be old. And probably broken. And of course, by the time my now new iPod is all prehistoric and dying, I’ll have to regurgitate another $400 to get a new one. And as somebody who needs to pay way more than I can afford to be paying for art school, the prospect of technology advancing is a completely depressing one.

And then there’s the whole global warming thing. Did it ever occur to you that each and every technological device that we use EATS energy? Like, they literally eat it. As soon as the stomachs in our gas-guzzling Hummers start rumbling, it’s time to pull over to the gas station, open their mouths and fill’em up. Doesn’t it worry you that we’re feeding our iPods when a lot of the human beings in the world can’t even feed themselves? Our laptops are part of the population crisis! I wonder how much coal is burned for me to obsessive-compulsively switch the light on and off. Every light I switch on in my house is another nail our giant coffin. Obviously, I’m going a little bit too far with my point and there are renewable forms of energy, but still. The idea of man-made devices devouring energy is kind of gross. And Sci-Fi.

I know that this sort of thing is all very hypocritical, considering that I am writing this entry on a laptop and it is meant to be read on the internet, but maybe that’s just another part of my point. We’re all so attached to our technology. Perhaps instead of separate entities all by themselves, our technology has become not part of the population crisis, but part of the growing obesity epidemic. Each new gadget or device becomes one more piece of weight added to our body, one more extra limb. One more thing that requires massive amounts of food and energy to live. And just like a fat kid and their cake, try and separate humankind from its technology. It won’t happen. Ever. Not until a hurricane blows New York City into Kentucky and Florida freezes over. As people living in such an immediate-gratification age, we need hard proof before we act on anything.

Although I never really lived in such an era, I am really feeling an artificial sense of nostalgia for the times when we sent postcards instead of e-mails and sat out on porches instead of in chat rooms. Part of me wants to build a time machine so I can go back in time to when the light bulb was new and technology was mysterious and exciting, not something that is like another BigMac to our cholesterol-clogged veins.

Anyway. My macbook is running low on battery power and its screen is dimming. I better hurry up finishing this entry and go give it some fossil fuels and dollar bills to munch on.