As far as I know, I’m a member of Generation X. If you are a member of my unlucky generation, you are caught between the Baby Boomers and Generation Y. It’s interesting how technology has affected these three generations.
Start with the boomers – they are generally afraid of technology that first appeared after 1970 or so. They still prefer to fly to a face to face meeting or pick up the phone. Members of my generation generally prefer e-mail because it isn’t time sensitive (it doesn’t usually demand immediate attention). The Y’s all seem to be addicted to an infantile bridge technology called texting. And texting is what I really want to talk about.
It’s an idiotic thing to be addicted to. Those tiny keyboards aren’t made for constant communication. I’ve tried it because I generally love technology. However, I refuse to embrace a technology that steps backwards socially. I’ve watched you Y’s with your addiction to driving and texting. You have a death wish. You have the attention spans of gnats. You couldn’t focus on an important task to save your job.
Embracing a technology like texting – one that forces a single core processor (the human brain) to overheat and eventually return a blue screen error – is a fool’s errand. I will embrace texting when it’s embedded on a multi-core chip or organic computing device that has the capacity to make it a pleasant experience. I’m not ready to drive and type. I’ve caught myself doing that on my Blackberry. I should have punched myself in the face for allowing myself to be trained that every response is so urgent I should risk my life to be available to answer e-mail even while commuting.