I haven’t done this sort of thinking in a long time, so forgive me if this comes off as sophomoric or undeveloped or whatever. I’m just kind of afraid of technology, man. It worries me. I have a four year old nephew who, by maybe a year or two ago, already had intimate knowledge of how to operate an iPhone (or at least how to find Angry Birds on it). But how is that going to affect him, ten, twenty, thirty years from now? How are any of us going to be affected by being constantly plugged in to electronics? Every day, I see people walking around or sitting, heads bowed, staring into a smartphone. I myself spend on average ~4 hours a day on the computer, and I hate it. I look back at my life up to this point, and realize that I’ve spent a lot of my waking hours in front of a computer, surfing the internet or playing games, and I hate that too.

I study history, and I understand that without advances in certain technologies – manufacturing, medicine, hygiene – we as a species would still be miserable, short-lived, smelly assholes. I just feel like the march of technological development in our time, especially entertainment technology, is unstoppable, and I can’t see what ultimate direction or purpose it has. The Japanese are building machines that resemble human beings, and are talking about instilling them with individual thought and intelligence. I saw this on the Discovery Channel once, so don’t quote me, but when I saw it, my first reaction wasn’t wonder or awe at what we’re capable of. I was scared and uncomfortable.

I can’t quite put my finger on why or how, but I just feel like all of this is really, really bad for us. I think about how I’ll raise my kids in the future, and one of my first thoughts is always to get them outside as much as possible. To connect them with both nature and other humans face-to-face. That thought is a lot more comforting to me than sticking an iPhone in my 4-year-old’s face just to get him to quiet down.