Brad Marley

At the time of this writing, it’s a lovely, cool late August evening in Michigan, and I’m sitting at the kitchen table with the patio door wide open, letting the breeze stream across the room. It’s a welcome respite from the stifling heat of the past few weeks, but I’m not complaining. There will soon be snow on the ground.

Somewhere outside I can hear a wind chime catch the wind as the cold front makes its way through my neighborhood. Hearing that familiar sound instantly transports me back to family vacations spent “on the farm” at my grandparent’s house in Pennsylvania.

Snuggled in the foothills of the Allegheny Mountains, I spent many summers at that house, sitting on the front porch with a book or magazine, while my Grandma’s wind chime provided the same clumsy musical accompaniment that I hear as I type away at my laptop.

This wasn’t so long ago that personal computers and e-mail were nonexistent, but we definitely were not living in the technology-crazy world that we inhabit in 2010.

The Web wasn’t ubiquitous; smartphones and iPods were nowhere to be found.

As far as technology goes, those were simpler times. Aside from a faint longing for my Sega Genesis, my so-called “devices” did not call to me from home, yearning for me to cradle them in my hands, swipe the screen with my finger, or send out a tweet.

But in a few short years, we have become one with our technology. It is literally changing our brains. We can’t go five minutes without checking our e-mail or looking for new Facebook updates from our friends. Smartphones that basically function as computers-in-a-pocket are constantly winning our attention over our friends and family. (When was the last time you actually talked to your friend on the phone?)

While nobody can argue that technology has improved our lives in countless ways, the attention it craves from its users with its myriad apps and alerts has put us in a heightened state of anxiety, always on our toes for something else.

Maybe it’s the familiar comforting ding! of an e-mail landing in our inbox.

Maybe it’s the satisfaction you get when you gain another follower on Twitter.

Whatever it is, we’re always plugged in, moving and thinking as fast as our Internet connection will allow.

We need to slow down.

Take a vacation.

Read a book (a real one.)

Meet a friend for coffee.

Do something. Go out and interact with real flesh-and-blood humans, not the avatars that substitute for their presence. 

But for God’s sake, forget about your technology for a few minutes.

Don’t worry – it will still be there when you get back.

During my junior year of college, way back in 2000, I wrote an article for a short-lived e-mag named ReWired. It was our English program's take on the more-popular magazine, Wired. For one of my submissions, I interviewed my friend's roommate to illustrate the pull of online chat rooms, which were probably at the height of their popularity. 

This is one of the better things I've written in my lifetime, so I wanted to share. I won't be offended if you stop halfway through.

It is funny, though, how our view of technology — and what is now commonplace — can change so drastically in a decade.

(If you get to the end and wonder where I am going with the quote from Thomas Laudal…yeah, I don't know, either.)

***

Pimpin: Hey, a/s/l check.

stargirl111: Yeah, I got a pic to trade. And I'm a hottie.

bowl_4_u: This room is whack. I'm outtie 5000.

cute_and_single: hi pimpin

jocksport456: u e-mail it first

pimpin394: Hi

In a typical chat room, like the one shown above, there are numerous conversations going on at once. People throw caution to the wind and take on personalities that sometimes are the complete opposite of their real life personas. For example, "stargirl111" is quite possibly not a "hottie" as she claims to be, but will say she is because she yearns to find that special someone in this virtual world. If the guy, or so he says, doesn't find her attractive, he will most likely ignore her the rest of the time or leave the chat room. "Stargirl111" will move on. And so the cycle begins for the upteenth time and certainly not the last time.

In a personal conversation, the body acts as a barometer for what the person really feels. The shuffling of feet could mean nervousness, shyness, or it could mean the person wants to get the hell out of that conversation. It would be considered rude to just walk away, especially if you know the person and will likely see them again. In a chat room, the body is taken out of the conversation.

The disappearance of the body is part of a new school of thought called "Virtual Reality Theory." Professors at colleges around the country are starting to believe in chat rooms as a new tool of teaching while some of us still see it as a way of flirting with the opposite sex. Either way we look at it, the two sides converge at one crucial point: The Body. After looking at the the issue from two different angles, we begin to see how.

What About Bob?

Bob is a twenty-year old Sales and Marketing Director for a manufacturing company in Michigan. Bob has some college education since he was going to school to study mechanical engineering before taking this job. He is single and shares a condominium with a friend he used to work with. Bob spends a lot of his free time in chat room.

Since discovering America Online, Bob is somewhat addicted to these rooms. As he logs on, I notice that his Buddy List contains over 80 "friends," ninety-five percent of whom he has never met. "I basically see the Internet as a way to meet new people," Bob says. As he sits down, a friend from the "real world" sends him an instant message (IM). "THis is my friend Frank from Germany. I communicate with him on-line because I'm too cheap to call him," Bob explains.

Only 10-15 "friends" on his Buddy List are guys. The majority are girls that he has met on-line. They are mostly local girls since he considers talking to non-locals a waste of time. "I don't like talking to people from, say, Utah. And, I'm not very fond of Mormons." As we are talking and chatting, one of his "friends" comes on-line. "Oh look, it's Dana!" Bob has never met Dana in real life even though they have been chatting for nearly two years now. "She's fun to talk to and her birthday is October 31st and I thought that was interesting," he says. "Besides, she has had a boyfriend the whole time."

Out of all the girls that Bob has met online, he has only met five of them in real life. He even dated one of them (Sarah) for six months, and he had the pictures to prove it. He told me that all five acted the same way in real life than they did in the chat rooms. I was curious about this, so I asked Bob if we would have gone up and started talking to Sarah if she just happened to be walking by. "I would want to," said Bob. "But would you?" I asked. "No."

Bob has been on-line 20 minutes and he already has six conversations going at one time. He has spoken with a few of these before but most of them he just met. "Gotta find a common link to start a conversation," Bob explains as he IMs a girl asking where she is from. Once he finds out she went to high school fifteen minutes away, the conversation begins. As they chat, I pursue the issue further about the difference between chat room conversations and a real life conversation. "The bluntness is beautiful because you can be (blunt)," he says. "You don't have to worry about being smacked." I think it is safe to say that there is a different persona on-line than there is off-line. To back his statement up, Bob says: "I would never approach a girl in real life because out of pure shyness. It is more difficult to approach a girl in person. The Internet is easier. If I don't like the conversation, I can click 'Cancel'."

Bob goes into a Detroit chat room to try and meet some more girls. After only a few minutes of trying, he meets a girl named "Sunnflower." She has a picture to send but only if Bob sends his first. They swap photos, and Bob likes what he sees. He tels her that she is "a definite cutie." "I like to see if there is a picture before I waste my time talking to them," he says. While he is talking to "Sunnflower", Bob starts looking through profiles of other users who are online. Thanks to the freedom of chat rooms, Bob doesn't have to talk to anyone he doesn't want to. Hiding behind the veil of a computer screen in the comfort of his own home, Bob is able to pick and choose the ones he shall talk to. If he doesn't want to talk to them, they won't know the difference. It's not like they see him staring at them from across the room, either.

He reads the profile of "JodyGirl0213" and it says that she is an administrative assistant. "That means she is boring," he says, referring to her job, "but let's see if she's hot."

Chat Rooms in the Classroom

At the University of Detroit-Mercy, Sister Christian Koontz is taking a giant step in making these chat rooms, once thought of as strictly a recreational tool, a part of Academia. She teaches a class in English called "The Journal." Her class can meet her in a chat room and discuss or ask her questions. The chat rooms are provided by a listserv service called Egroups. Although hesitant to talk about the advantages and disadvantages of chat rooms, due to the fact that she herself is still learning, Sister Koontz thinks that there is a gigantic upside to this idea. "I do think chat rooms have significant, and as far as I am aware, largely untapped, value to academic discourse," she explained through an e-mail. "I see the chat room as a fertile intermediary space, bridging personal journaling and formal academic writing, a space where students can write, to a certain extent, out of an atmosphere, attitudes, and orientation similar to that[sic] I believe to be the most conducive to effective journal work and begin to give rhetorical form to their writing, almost without realizing it because audience presence is real to them yet not so intimidating as a physically present audience is," Koontz added.

The last part of her statement can be directly connected to what our friend Bob said about talking on-line. Sister Koontz's students find it easier to talk when they can't see anyone or don't know who they are talking to, and there is no body to deal with in these conversations.

Toward the end of the e-mail message, Sister Koontz said that she advocates a "considerable application" of Harrison Owen's theories on "Open Space Technology." Open Space Technology is one way to enable all kinds of people, in any kind of organization, to create inspired meetings and events. Over the last 15 years, it has also become clear that opening space, as an intentional leadership practice, can create inspired organizations, where ordinary people work together to create extraordinary results with regularity. Sister Koonts is trying to get her students to reach this goal through the power of virtual reality.

We once thought of online classes as something that would happen in the future. Five years ago, we imagined a world where we could get out of bed, turn on the computer, and attend classes in our underwear. Well, now we can. Students don't have to be worried about making a dumb comment or walking into class late and being stared at; with on-line classes, we lose the human element that comes with "regular" classes. Chances are, no student knows what any of the other students look like, and therefore, that have no reservations about participating in class. The potential for embarrassment is just nonexistent.

The Fate of the "Real World"

In the real world, there is something us humans like to call "fate." We have no power over it and it controls every move we make. In a virtual world, would fate be a possibility? If we programmed these worlds, wouldn't we be playing God and thus, determining fate? To quote Thomas Laudal on this issue, he says: "People make VWs (virtual worlds) while God, or something/something quite different than people, created the real world. Does this distinguish the real world from the virtual worlds? Hardly. The truth is that we don't have a clue who — or what — created our real world. But even if we knew for a fact that people like ourselves did NOT create the real world, this would not be a significant difference between virtual and real worlds…"

The significant issue here is that most people in chat rooms, like Bob and Sister Koontz'[sic] students, view it as a "fake" world. Quite the opposite of the real world, they can do things in this "fake" world that they wouldn't normally do. The students, who would be terrified of public speaking in real life, can speak in front of a large number of people while sitting at home in a robe.

These chat rooms are, in a sense, small virtual worlds where the "citizens" leave their bodies at home and explore unknown territories. The "souls" come and go as they please and there are no repercussions. Anyone can get away with anything. At least anything they say can be dismissed since actions do not speak louder than words.

Smartphones.

The scourge of humanity; the destroyer of work/life balances the world over.

For all of the ways technology has improved our lives, these guys are not one of them.

Thanks to their "always on" capability, we can now work from, literally, anywhere.

In fact, I am convinced that these seemingly harmless mini-computers were invented by evil managers to trick their employees into unknowingly adopting a tech tethered lifestyle.

"Here's your smartphone. You can check e-mail, surf the Web and be available to me 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Isn't that grand?"

And now, everybody has them. (Except for my Dad, of course. He's still learning how to check his voicemail.) They are so vital to our success that we must carry them wherever we go — meetings, the bathroom, church. You never know when an e-mail with a bright red exclamation mark will hit your inbox.  But when it does? God forbid it takes you two hours to respond to that email. (Ironically, these devices invented — and cornered — the urgency market. We are all a little less patient now.)

The only time I yearn for one is when I step off an airplane and want to check my e-mail to see what I missed while traveling 500 miles per hour at 30,000 feet, and even then the world continues to spin on its axis as I travel to my hotel.

When I'm working, I have my computer open in front of me. When I'm not working, I'm not working.

The first time you respond to an e-mail at 9 p.m. on a Tuesday night, you destroy that oh-so-precious work/life balance. You might as well tell your client that your personal time means nothing. Sleep? Relaxion? Who needs it. I am here to serve you. And do nothing else. 

I have successfully avoided this tether for five years, but like a convict on death row, I realize my time is nearly up.

But until it is, I'm going to rebel.

Not sent from my smartphone. Please excuse all typos.

Last night, after my daughter dozed of while I hummed her Pearl Jam's "Elderly Woman Behind the Counter In A Small Town," I read my favorite blogs on a device that is approximately the same dimensions as a deck of playing cards. (I'm required by law to tell you the device was a Christmas present from my wife.)

While I scrolled through the blogs with a swipe of my finger, I couldn't help but compare it to a Saturday Night Live skit from early 2001 that starred Will Ferrell and Sean Hayes as clothing store employees. In the sketch, Ferrell, who plays the store's owner, pulls out a cell phone that is no bigger than a cashew and places a phone call to fuel the company jet, or whatever. But what makes the clip so absurd is Ferrell's character is supposedly on the cutting-cutting edge of technology, and he has the device to prove it. (I would link to the clip, but NBC's Internet police have eliminated every potential link.)

But here we sit, on the cusp of the second decade of this millennium, and technology has rendered this old clip not funny, but almost prophetic.  Technology is only getting faster and smaller and more mobile.

Take my cell phone history, for instance.

In 2001, my phone did two things: it made and accepted phone calls.

Today, my mobile device is, literally, a computer. I can take pictures, record video, write a "tweet" — if you're reading this in 2032, don't ask — send e-mail…you name it, it will do it.

What do the next eight years hold? Five years?

Even though this post and a recent post of mine might suggest I am a tech neophyte, I am geeked about the possibilities technology might allow us in the near future.  And it's all because of a tiny device my wife gifted me (sorry, rules) that lets me watch Michael McDonald song parodies in the palm of my hand.

Thanks, technology!

It's scary to think that my kids will one day use ubiquitous technology that will be completely foreign to me.

I liken this theory to my Dad and e-mail: he just recently learned to use the "Reply" button to respond to my e-mail. Before, he forwarded all correspondence.  (Although, judging by the number of forwards I get from him in my inbox on a daily basis, he still views e-mail as a tool to send me the hilariousness of the Internet.)

So, it's inevitable that my daughter will come home from school in the near future and try to explain the newest Google to me, and I'll just scratch my head and walk away.

The sad part is we're closer to this day than we think, and I blame the Amazon Kindle.

It started when I read a post over at The Writer's Coin that called the Kindle its "Gadget of the Year."

I have heard of the Kindle, but I have never seen one in the wild. But now I wanted to hold one, feel one, see what all the fuss was about. Luckily, my colleague has one, so I asked her if I could give it a test run.

Surprisingly, I didn't hate it. (Sidenote: If I were to give my Dad, an avid reader, a Kindle for Christmas, I'm pretty sure he would drop dead of a heart attack.) It's no book, but it had a readable interface that is about as close to a book as it gets, without actually, you know, being a book.

However, in what is probably the first sign of the technology-induced ignorance I fear, I can't see myself purchasing one of these machines. I prefer the feel of a real book with real pages to turn as opposed to the square-shaped device that flips the page at the touch of a button.

Not only that, but a large collection of books looks much cooler on a bookshelf than a lone Kindle collecting dust that houses my entire book collection in digital format.

But I know I'm in the minority; perhaps I'm even part of that borderline generation that will never truly embrace the e-reader. The demand is unprecedented, but I'm indifferent and I think the creators know this.

They're content to pass me by and, instead, market to the future consumers who will, inevitably, shape the face of this technology.

Like, my daughters.

Once all books are technological-ized, I'm afraid to see what comes next. Hopefully, I'll be able to unplug myself if it's too much to bear.