THEN COMES SUNDAY AND THE LITTLE GLOWING SCREEN

 May 29. 2016

The cut line for Star Trek: TNG and the Borg comes to mind.  "Resistance is useless!"  The burgeoning electronic revolution is like gravity and time: relentless. Yesterday I chatted with an acquaintance (an expression that really does not apply, as listening is mostly the only option with her)  who has been a self proclaimed Luddite. She sported a new do-it-all phone! The Borg advances.

This current trend is feeling, to me, like The Invasion of the Body Snatchers. In the 1978 version with Donald Sutherland, remember in the final scene? Even he has been cloned!  Is it futile to hang on by my toe nails to semi-analog? It plagues me now.  I just don't want to become one of those poor souls who are constantly monitoring and being monitored: bent in reverent supplication to the (LGS) the Little Glowing Screen.   It's bad enough with my Little Cake of Soap (LCS) cell that I check when going to the movies or a play to make sure it doesn't buzz or do whatever it does. (It seldom does anything!)  To me, those of you who are becoming slaves to the LGS, are just sad.  In person, you may attempt a chat (or even a real conversation?), but the LGS calls to you and you are gone. Is it an addiction?  You avert your eyes, thinking that the other person won't notice your inattention. Is there a secret longing for connection to a text or even,  an actual voice. A Call!  Are you the obese woman in the theatre audience who cannot resist the glow and 'secretly' checks in the middle of the performance to see who's there on the other side: the glow illuminating your several and separate chins, reflecting the moisture; glinting in your downcast eyes, immediately interrupting and taking your seat side neighbors out of the show.  

Are you the friend who apologizes when they "really have to take this."  

Are you the Borg:  the Pod People: slaves to the Little Glowing Screen: the stuff of life reduced to the buzz, the clever ring tone, the immediacy of emoji fluff: the gnur of life made manifest when your LGS insistingly insists to attend! goddammit!!  and respond? 

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Gosh.. where did all of that come from? 

Coincidentally... right now!   A Geico commercial depicts a young couple on the side of a beautiful fountain. He kneels to propose. Her phone goes off!  Twice!!  It's reminds me of that nosy person who interrupts your important conversation in a social setting without a clue that their rude behavior is rude at all.  

This is not at all where I expected today's entry to become.  Oh well. 

May 29, 2016

michael sheehan