Why Technology Killed My Brain

Published April 1, 2008

By Bridget Treco

“Compact discs blow. People were not meant to hear music with such clarity. People need to hear snaps and pops in that shit.”
—David Cross, Mr. Show

Back in 1996, I don’t think this great American comedian had even begun to anticipate how far our quest for “musical clarity” and technological advances would go. The digital music age is in full swing, with the iTunes store at the forefront, and illegal music piracy systems like LimeWire still humming in the background. Now, I’m all for legal downloading on the Internet and sure, iTunes is a brilliant idea. Steve Jobs is a technological god, blah blah blah, I’m down for it all. But I’m also still down for actually going out and getting off my ass and buying CDs. Like…what happened to that? Technology happened, and sales at music stores (actual, physical ones, mind you) are at their lowest.

It’s not just one industry that’s suffering at the hands of technology. People are too lazy to go and rent videos at a store anymore. Instead, we have NetFlix! Or we use services like OnDemand, or we can even rent them on iTunes. We are now in the age where more people read the newspaper online than they do in the flesh. That is, fewer and fewer people subscribe to major newspapers and fewer people even hold a local newspaper like our fine Water Tower in their hands. It’s great and convenient that we can access the news online, but apparently our attention spans are too short to sit down and read the paper. The morning paper— an age-old, essential institution in our society, dating back to cavemen writing on walls to spread the news— is slowly dying.

Is technology really creating more jobs, or is it just destroying them? Sure, there are more technologically-based careers out there, but hundreds of people are being laid off at major newspapers because their sales and audience are gradually declining. And why subscribe to the paper when you can read all about it on the Internet for free?

There is an underlying trend concerning technology that speaks to the future of social interaction. Services like NetFlix and iTunes just make us lazier. But what about online dating? Online shopping? What about the monstrosity that is Second Life, or phone services where we don’t even talk to humans? We apply for most jobs online these days, and Facebook is undoubtedly one of our best forms of communication. All of our pictures, videos, and memories are online.

At the rate we’re going, all major universities could plausibly be “online universities” (University of Phoenix, anyone?). Maybe in a few decades we’ll be clicking through the halls of a virtual Davis Center and taking classes in the online version of Waterman. Technological dependency allows the average citizen to lead a “fulfilling” and “productive” life without leaving his desk. Maybe it’s cool, but is it really healthy? How are our future generations supposed to maintain the ability to interact with the world?

I’ll admit, it’s hard for me to avoid the conveniences of technology. I mean, Facebook has already sucked away most of my mind, but I’m still trying to keep my feet on the ground. The lesson I’ve learned is this: Just because I can read the news online doesn’t mean I have to, just because I can buy everything on iTunes doesn’t mean I’m going to throw away all my CDs, and just because I can subscribe to NetFlix doesn’t mean I’m not going to drive to the video store every now and then…or walk. Sure, I can date online or choose to attend the University of Phoenix instead of the University of Vermont…but um, I’m not going to do that. Man, I’d like to see something replace the Internet just to make it finally feel small, but that’s improbable. And so the lethargy continues…

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