My alarm buzzes at 5:40 am. In a moment of weakness around 7:30pm the night before, I set it 10 minutes later than usual. I was creating my own personal hypotheses, that while 9 hours of sleep might leave me feeling rested, 9 hours and 10 minutes of sleep would eliminate that soul-crushing feeling of “morning, again.” In my 22 years of in-the-field hands-on in-depth research, I’ve yet to find the proper time slot to make me a 5am beam of sunshine peeking through the curtains and spreading fervor and joy1, but that’s not what science is all about; science is about the experiments you Don’t play.
I get in the shower and think about anything other than the upcoming day. I silently say a prayer that the kid I help at the middle school two towns over is out sick today, but I know I’m asking too much of Him. No god nor devil nor flaming skeleton motorcycle rider could stop Lucas’ unceasing warpath from his house to the van to the school to his locker and back into my reluctant craw. I don’t dislike helping the kid, I’m just lukewarm on my job’s whole premise. Every kid in that class is sneakin’ iPad games when the teachers not lookin, and gettin in each other's personal spaces and such, and yea Lucas is autistic, doesn’t mean he should have a personal fun police officer. Granted, he really can’t handle the iPad games at all. He loses in the game and just freaks. “Why didn’t it work, this iPad’s cheating on me,” the kid's gonna be an absolute menace when he learns how to curse. So I follow him around and write down his assignments and every so often I have to help him write an essay or tell him in a hushed tone to focus up, but for the most part I just sit in the classes and read a book. His reward for being calm and productive in class is that he gets his iPad at lunch to game. He’s addicted to the thing, and they choose THAT as his positive reinforcement. I think it’s a little backwards, but I can’t blame the staff who set it up that way. There’s nothing else to offer him, nothing he covets more dearly than 10 minutes on CoolMathGames.com. Sometimes when I get home I get on there and try one of the games he was playing, convincing myself I’m trying some thought experiment in an attempt to understand him better, but I think in reality I’m trapped in infancy; a product of my time.
I’ve been mulling over in my head how to write about cell phones and technology without making some trite catfish/black mirror/hallmark ass point where we all learn in the end that maybe we could have a little less Facetime and a little more Face-to-Face time, and that we can get there with the help of our friend Cal Q. Late the talking computer, as well as the good people at Sony. The other day I saw an app that advertised its ability to keep you off your phone, and it even provided healthy, soothing alternatives like simulated fabric and the sound of waves. In as early as 2011 if you were pitching an app on your phone to help you stop looking at your phone, you’d better have been pitching it to the 3 other emaciated white guys in your Milwaukee-based sketch comedy group because the concept is laughably ironic, but not so funny that you’d fuck it up and giggle on stage like what happened with the sketch about the Iraqi dance instructor, Derek.
Ok, I stopped writing briefly to change into my special writing gear2, so expect a killer couple of paragraphs comin’ your way. So I was talkin about phones.
I think the guiltiest party isn’t even the people who created this technology for the world; in doing so, you’d have to blame the computer people, and the T.V. people, and the guy who made those little accordion-lookin peeper holes that let you watch a horse run or a train go by for a nickel. They were all part of a process, this living breathing happening of real world magic. I don’t care if you can explain to me exactly how it happens technology-wise, having a damn gizmo in my pocket that can order a prostitute from Laos is unholy power not meant for man. That’s not something I’ve ever done obviously, but I would like more praise for my self-control and willpower. Again that’s not something I want, but Jai coulda been on my front stoop TODAY, yet my porch remains as whoreless as a faithful father’s loins or a Love’s Truck stop right before payday.
Instant video calling and widespread coverage means now you can facetime your grandparent’s foreheads from anywhere in the country, and now you can truly know, quantifiably, that you’re a bad grandson. All that time spent looking at frogs and flags on the internet's premier small-form text-based posting plaza, and so little time spent asking what their childhood was like, or what advice they’d give to a 22 year old. I’m not being preachy, I can’t stand them either. They’ve been alive longer than Jimmy Carter and their brains have started to spoil, but what goes with them is a peace that those born 85’ on can’t seem to grasp, and can’t truly know they lack. I don’t think technology is the devil because I’m not religious, but me and a zealot might agree that technology is as much the devil as tsunamis, atomic bombs, and Charlie Sheen is. Whether it’s natural, man-made, or articulately crafted and brought into being by a conniving and mischievous God- his fingers tented as he plays a living April fools prank on all of us- it's all a disaster and it's all part of the landscape now. Things we have to tolerate and lament publicly, those same things that we privately flock to, trying to catch a glimpse of the respective collapsed piers, mushroom clouds, and Barbara Walters interviews. We do so from the safest distance possible, behind a thin layer of glass projecting blue light and pixels3, ogling at the newest, brightest and loudest thing.
So who can blame Lucas? He’s addicted to the thing, but I bet if you showed his reading coach or his history teacher how to check their “Screen Time” on their iPhone, they might start to notice the glass house of cards that they stand in, and the stones they were planning on throwing4. I’m not saying “we’re all slaves to our phones,” I wouldn’t even argue “we’re better off without them.” Frankly, we’re objectively better off WITH them. No more fumbling paper maps back into order because they fell everywhere after you hit a deer, or a kid; I’ve got Waze. No more feeling superior to others because you can do long division in your head; my calculator’s always in my pocket. No more toting cases full of Megadeth and Judas Priest CD’s across the country, asking your friend to search endlessly for “the Iron Maiden live show where they had the skeleton on the poster”; I’ve got Spotify, and if the device that gives it to me isn’t next to me when I wake up, I instinctively paw for it. I crave the dopamine it sends rushing into my brain when I see a notification or a tweet I laugh at, and I just want it to feel as good as it did. I reach for my phone every morning thinking, “this time that feeling will go away.” I reach for it like a baby reaches out for a milky teet, but instead of sweet teet, it provides me with the familiar earthy taste of mashed up peas and carrots. Always left feeling like, “This scratches the itch, but when do I get the good stuff again?”
For those like myself who were born with the internet already here and in full swing, that feeling of your first fix is maddening; better than any high made or sold by and for mankind. All I remember is learning, and learning quickly, how to navigate the techno-realm. You start by clicking a video on the YouTube homepage, and in a week you’ve intuitively discovered the recommended feed is much more tailored to your tastes, and that liking a video means you’ll see more of it. You’re in 4th grade, but it’s like your brain and the machine are one. Nowadays, you see babies who can swipe through videos on their iPads at the airport or in pediatrician waiting rooms. I guess that’s the sacrifice in conceding we’re “better off with them.” In a way, we’re losing part of us.
Y’know, like the sun does?
Looser Sweatpants
Blue light? “Pixels”? Sure sounds like magic to me, folks.
like a bunch of bulls in china shops.