Digitally Deprived: A Survival Story

Digitally Deprived: A Survival Story

As I sit here and recall my last nineteen long years on this planet and my various interactions with different mediums of technology, it has become very obvious to me that I, like most people where I am from, have had really no major interactions with technology compared to others in my age group. I sit in coffee joints at night and watch people become more introverted than a turtle, ducking into their little shells of technological safety. They look at you through their faux, so-call trendy DKNY knock-off glasses, dressed in their Abercrombie clothes, hiding behind nothing but the glow of a laptop or in the corner talking to someone on their cell phones which just happens to match what they are wearing that day, just like every day.

It’s hard to sit here and think about what my past experiences with technology have been. For my area we were pretty well off, upper-middle class I suppose. It’s not common to see people with cell phones, pagers, or anything like that. I am the only kid from my class who left the state for college, out of the ten that actually decided to go. Most people are content running family farms or just becoming a "factory rat" as I refer to them. I shouldn’t be too harsh though, three if my family members work there and are all doing very well for themselves. I just can’t imagine watching pills pass by me all day and calling that a career. I believe there is life beyond the one factory in my town.

I think the one difference between rural and urban people is that need to have the newest and biggest thing out there, to get them one foot ahead of the rat race. It seems like everyone is scrambling to find that one thing that will set him or her apart from the crowd....

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...ld agree with that as well. One day without service on their cell phones or high-speed Internet and they wouldn’t know what to do. It would be like their little technological world was collapsing.

Knowing what I know now, I don’t plan on letting my children be brought up in a technology-based culture. I think it’s better for people to learn that there is life beyond computers, cells, and the Internet. I think we need to take a giant step back and just take in what little bit of real beauty is left in the world, because before you know it, everything beautiful left in the world will be destroyed, and soon there will even be a McDonald’s at the bottom the Grand Canyon, on the ocean’s bottom, or who knows, even in space. I believe that today’s society is so in love with what it could be, that it is forgetting how beautiful it is, and was, and could be if left alone.