[Erin] Entertaining ourselves to death

I got a cell phone some years ago for my youngest, who was then 15. (She's now 23.) This was way before every 15 year old in the world had a cell phone, and she went around showing it to everyone. It received and sent calls. Period. No pictures, no funny stuff.

We did this because she was a swimmer, and the team worked out in a less-than-wonderful part of town. I picked her up after practice (or another member of the car pool did) but still....I wanted her to be able to reach me. Instantly.

This seems legitimate. So do parental cell phones when kids are little, so the parents can reach each other, so a baby sitter can reach the parents. SOMETIMES a cell phone is useful in a work situation. (However. I never give my cell number to clients or co-counsel. If I'm to talk to them, I want it to be under circumstances where I can concentrate, not while I'm at the checkout line at the supermarket. Or, God forbid, driving down the road.)

I say all this to say what we all know, that this technology can be useful, if limited appropriately. But we all know that most of the time it isn't so limited. That you can't sit in a cafe without hearing all the gory details of someone else's romantic troubles. That cars are constantly weaving all over the road because the driver is on the phone. That cell phones even interrupt Mass. (I note that I have never heard a cell phone during an opera. Y'know why that is? It's because everyone who ever allowed that to happen was immediately beaten to death by the people in the surrounding seats, and it's been long enough that the gene pool has been purged of this trait. So....why don't we feel that way about Mass?)

CS Lewis said that one good way to avoid God is to keep the radio on at all times. This maxim seems appropriate here.

I'm a teacher, and I can tell you that cell phones are DEATH for education. The kids are ALWAYS playing with electronics; phones, ipods, cameras, games. It's crazy. The threat of confiscation does not deter them, because the parent can simply come after school and pick it up.

In addition, we have American Gangster to tell the kids that drug dealing is just an enlightened form of capitalism.

No wonder the kids are so screwed up.

Such is the way of the world anyone who thinks it can be stopped had might as well command the sun to stand still in the heavens.

Amish understand that too fast a rate of change causes a major disconnect between generations. I've heard an Amish man explain that they are not anti-technology as such, but want to be sure that grandparents and grandchildren share a bulk of life experiences - no generation gap. The rate of change must be kept very slow for that to happen. That allows them to observe the impact of various technologies on the mainstream society and make informed choices about what to eventually introduce.

Anyone else out there remember a newspaper article in the last year or two about a woman who decided to live with only pre-1960 technology for a month, as part of her Master's program? She was shocked at how much more time she had, and how less stressed she felt.

We've bought a bill of goods about techno-improvements.

I have teenagers (boys) and sometimes the battle to limit the electronic media is exhausting. (and mine don't have their own cell phones, can't get online without special permission, and are allowed about an hour of "game-time" each week)

On the other hand, not long ago I growled, "What are you doing!" at my oldest as he stared intently at his hand-me-down pda.

"It's a rosary meditation. Cool, huh?"

M_David:

You have the wrong movie and movie star. If you want to slam Latinos, you want Pacino and Carlito's Way, not Denzel and American Gangster.

Erin:

Agreed, agreed, agreed. At the retail store where I'm working for the holidays, you see the kids fiddling with their cell phones on break (sometimes not on break, if they're out of sight of a manager) "txting" with their thumbs in manic mode like, well, video game freaks. (Keep in mind, one of the very reasons text messages are so popular among teens is that they are only semi-detectable by authority figures, parents, teachers and otherwise, unlike actual phone calls.)

As for me, I only use my cell phone for calls, and frankly have no interest in the iPhone (or even iPods). (I've held out with 45s and LPs, then cassettes, and now CD's for my music as long as possible -- this has become a bit of a quirky tradition for me.)

And as for video games ... to me, that's Pac-Man circa 1983. 'Nuff said.

Attention deficit disorder is being diagnosed at record levels by kids' doctors. While I do think ADD is real disease, given the incredible overstimulation of today's children by technology compared to when I was a kid (late '70s/early '80s), one wonders with ADD what is the chicken and what is the egg.

I'm very techno-savvy in some ways, so I'm hardly Amish. Yet in other ways I'm a proud Luddite.

Larry Parker: M_David you have the wrong movie and movie star. If you want to slam Latinos, you want Pacino and Carlito's Way, not Denzel and American Gangster.

You have the wrong post and poster. If you want to slam me and choose to ignore my actual post, you've picked the wrong guy. No bite.

Elizabeth--Are you talking about the book "Better Off"? It was written by a guy getting his master's degree from MIT, and he went to live in a Mennonite-like community for a year. MIT was not thrilled with his thesis to explore a world without technology.

Connie,

I had not heard of that book. The story I had in mind was about a female grad student who only did the experiment for a month or two. Or three. It was in the local paper some time last year. She didn't go farther back than some date in the 1950s.

Back to the Amish for a moment. I had the pleasure of touring Amish businesses in Missouri a couple of years ago. One shop made furniture and wooden playground equipment. They use power tools with electricity from Honda car batteries. They also used kerosene-fueled refrigerators from Sweden (?) in their homes. Smells like kerosene all the time.

I have to say that the Amish cookbooks were a disappointment. I thought we'd be getting great-grandma-style country cooking. Instead they were full of recipes using Jello and canned soups, right out of the 1950s Betty Crocker cookbook.

The other misapprehension people have about the Amish is that they are "anti-technology." They are *not.*

Neither were the Shakers, who are often used as examples of simple, low-energy consumption lives. What's admirable about the Amish is that they use much less energy per capita than typical Americans. In discussing the Amish, you often hear these criticisms that they are not sustainable,ie not completely independent of mainstream America's high-tech, gasoline-intensive lifestyle, as if that were a failure on their part. The Amish lifestyle comes far closer to long-term sustainability than the average Americans. Future generations of Americans who won't have our current blessing of cheap fossil energy will have to re-learn what the Amish practice every day - the skills of agriculture and animal husbandry that are all but forgotten by average Americans these days. Why study these things when all you need to know is Wal-mart has cheap food, big screen TVs and cell phones with music and games?