The Walden Experiment

Today's troublesome topic; society's dependence on personal technology, especially concerning the laptop and cellular phone. Not just the average teenager who cracks out a cell phone during awkward moments of conversation though, my own dependence on it.

My sister and her US History classmates were given the assignment of ditching the LCD screen (along with other modern amenities) for a week, Walden style, starting last Friday. Well, you can imagine how that has went for them. Shoot I could do it I thought at first. I do it at least one weekend a month, sometimes longer, when I go camping. Piece of cake. The more I got thinking about it though, I realized there's now way I could pull it off without alienating some of my friends. At least with the camping people could check my Facebook status and say "Oh he's doing what he loves" no matter how randomly out of time and place (and weather) it may be. 

If I willingly gave up the clunky rectangle that is my Tracphone, or the stovetop-like steel casing of my laptop, though, I would have no way to arrange frisbee games, dinners, or ironically even the campouts themselves. My life wouldn't be in ruins, but I would be essentially forced into solitude unless I had the fortune of bumping into people on the street or the foresight to write their telephone numbers in some sort of address book (assuming landlines were fair game)

Here's the thing, though. I consider myself to less technology dependent than most people my age. When I'm bored, I go for a run, or read, or pointlessly pile snow in a heap in my backyard. Were some of the more techno multitasking-savvy friends of mine to be cut off for a week, I honestly don't know what they would do. Perhaps they would be fine, inconvenienced but adaptable and creative. Texting, Facebooking, playing smartphone games, these actions should only serve as addictive filler between the important events of life, after all. So if you ever do feel like mashing the keyboard during, say, important social events (rather than the more acceptable periods of time you have, like when you're using a crosswalk, attending a class you paid $2,000 for, bicycling down the sidewalk, etc.) remember that, at least for the moment, "all your friends are right here".

So even though the Walden experiment has the potential to give a radical new perspective on life to most of it's participants, odds are they won't be able to give up the electronics and get the full effect of it. And I can't really blame them.

On a side note, don't you think it's about time Google spell check recognized the word "texting"?