The Rocky Mountain Collegian

This high-tech, always in touch cyberworld is starting to creep me out.

Walking through the Plaza, I realized that more people were having conversations with their little boxes than with their in-the-flesh friends.

Riding the bus, there are always bouts of electronic ringing followed by, "Dude, I'm on the bus." Then, "I dunno, what do you want to do tonight?"

Is your social life really so action-packed that the rest of us have to listen to you plan it? Can it not wait another 10 minutes until you can find some corner and give your friend your full attention?

Our society is turning into one where the normal attention span is about as long as the last intelligent thing "Dubya" had to say. Linda Stone, a Microsoft researcher, calls it the age of "continuous partial attention."

While you're planning your evening on your cell phone and checking your e-mail, your pager goes off. So, you hang up and return the page, check your homework on WebCT and continue to think about dinner. Now you're thinking about five or six things simultaneously.

Thomas Friedman, a writer for the Washington Post, said it best: "We're turning into computer servers! Does anyone else find this disturbing?"

Technology has its benefits. If you get stranded on a stretch of deserted highway you can call a tow truck without reenacting the desert scene from "The Three Amigos." E-mail, GPS, GIS, digital cable, cars that unlock by satellite - they're all great.

But, there is a point where this convenience becomes intrusive.

In the store, a lady walks down an aisle yelling at the top of her lungs to be heard over the static on her cell phone. "Do you want the beans with cumin or with lime juice?" she screams, as if her friend will disown her if she chooses wrong. The other customers quickly walk away.

In lecture, the distinctive ring of a cell phone breaks through the class. The students look around to find the rude classmate who couldn't turn off the ringer for 50 minutes. The teacher, looking sheepish, runs to his bag and turns off his phone.

This invasion isn't confined to the world of adults.

My sister, a high school junior, told me me a story. A teacher of a freshman class asked everyone with a cell phone to raise their hands. Nearly half of the kids did. Then he asked those with pagers to keep them up. Only half of the hands went down.

What on earth does a freshman in high school need a pager and a cell phone for?

Are all those kids at my mild-mannered alma matter in the center of middle class suburbia really so wild and crazy that their parents need to give them enough technology to locate them in the middle of a South American jungle?

These intrusions even cross the line into danger!

How many of us have had to swerve because of some other drivers dividing their attention between the road and their communication devices?

Our environment is increasingly saturated with the radio waves needed to facilitate all this communication. Granted, the only real short term effect of these things on our own bodies is a minuscule heating of the brain.

But, the fact is this technology hasn't been around long enough for us to have noticed any long term effects. They could range from brain cancer to the disruption of migratory animals like whales and birds.

The ultimate danger of this convenience - for us humans, anyway - is dependency. Just look at California. It is very possible, even probable, that the rest of the country has the same fate in store.

Rolling blackouts, periods without heat or light or access to the Internet - to some this sounds like the beginning of the end.

But, our ancestors got by just fine without all of this. People today still live without all of this. When did so much of our society start thinking we couldn't survive without our machines?

I say let's reclaim our independence!

Take a break and turn off your laptop, wireless modem, cell phone, beeper and satellite tracking devices.

Lean back, take a deep breath and soak up the radio waves.

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