Neanderthal

Commentary on:

"Hooked on Gadgets and Paying a Mental Price" by Matt Richtel

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/07/technology/07brain.html?emc=eta1


This is why I will never buy an IPhone, or a Blackberry, and why I left Facebook. It's bad enough that my penmanship and ability to spell correctly is completely shot due to the use of Word and Spell Check over the past 15 years; but it's even worse that I can't live without a cell phone. God help me if I were to drag the Internet every place I gallivanted. Even sadder? My once reveled in and cherished collection of non fiction and reference books are now lonely and becoming silverfish fodder due to my new found love affair with the Google search engine. At least I still have all my CD's, and have not yet moved on to an MP3 player. In the eyes of my peers, I might as well have a collection of clunky old vinyl. Yes folks, I'm a proverbial Neanderthal clinging to the stone age.

So, I'm not ashamed, I'll own my neurosis. I lost track of time on Facebook, not just a little, but a lot. For the first time in my life, all because I could not tear myself away from Facebook, I began not only running late for appointments but forgetting them all together. I felt panicked if I did not inject my opinion or thoughts into every post that piqued my interest, and as I witnessed hour upon hour melting into nothingness, spent monitoring and managing Facebook, a rather unsettling feeling oozed in. I was not using Facebook, it was using me. Creepy.

It's been nice to let it go. Honestly it has. A tad lonely, but nice just the same. Sometimes I get a hankerin' to move out into the middle of no where (if such a destination still exists) and completely dry out. No cell phone, no cable, no e-mail, no Internet.....just a book, the birds, the breeze, sky and trees, grass, flowers, soil. Simple stillness.