Resistance is Futile

One of the great moments in television history was when the Starship Voyager met the Borg for the first time in the episode "Q Who?". The ultimate outcome of machine/human integration was not presented as an appealing forecast of the future. The six million dollar man showed the benefits of such integration, but left unchecked Lee Majors could have had metal projections and wires sticking out of his face and bodily cavities. But the 1960's was an ominous time with a nuclear threat over our heads. Hiroshima was only 20 years earlier and we didn't believe we would live to see the next millenium. We all wanted to see a rosy outlook for the future and believed that technology was a good thing and held the seeds for world peace and an end to starvation and disease. We wanted to forget the horrors and evils that technology could bring if left to it's own course.

While not quite the visionary that Steve Jobs was (see note), I do predict the integration of computer chips into our neural network which will allow us to communicate and surf the web without any external equipment and this will be very evident within the next ten years. We will be bluetoothed!

I have done my part to keep this integration with the world wide web at bay by not getting a cell phone when they were marketed to the general public. What's wrong with using public phones? I caved due to peer pressure and bought an Omnipoint phone manufactured by Ericcson. My fight had escalated to the next level and I had vowed to not buying a smart phone. What's wrong with a phone that just makes phone calls? Who needs a phone that can socially network with other people, hold 5000 albums of music, your entire life story in photos and film clips and allow you to effortlessly send and receive email and text messages? No not me, I do not need to be that connected.

It started so innocently. I was at home bored to death and I put myself on Facebook. This was pretty cool. Instantly I am connected to dozens of people I know.  I am now aware of where they are, what they ate for dinner, what they're doing, and who they are doing it to. I was amazed at how easy it is to socialize through this method. Before I knew it I was connected to hundreds or people and if I wanted I could connect to thousands of people.

Not being satisfied with the limitations of telling everyone what I am doing on Facebook, I took the next step and started to write a blog which is what your are currently reading, If you're not reading this you are not missing much, at least that's what some people tell me. Now I have unlimited space to express my beliefs and opinions and to write things that can be deep or incoherent, or both. So here I am baring my inner most throughts and secrets to all (except for the stuff that can get me in trouble), by the way I really enjoy my job and my bosses and must admit they are doing wonderful work and are excellent leaders.

Both of my children moved up to iphones and this has turned out to be a wonderful thing. They spend so much time being connected to the cyber-social world (the collective) that they have been a pleasure to live with. They do not have the time to find fault with me and criticize the choices I have made in life. They are happy. Everyone is happy!

Something's wrong. I am not as happy as I should be. Given that I am a depressed introvert, only have a number of friends that I can count on half a hand (if I had a finger amputated) and generally do not like other people, I can't understand why I am not happy living in my little house, in my little world consisting of three million people within an area of 70 square miles (I had to throw something in about Brooklyn after all Brooklyn is the basis of my blog). What is making my kids happy that I don't have? Youth? Good looks? Cheap room and board? Then it occurred to me. I do not have a smart phone.

Four weeks ago I bought an HTC Trophy Windows 7 phone. My kids had iphones but I couldn't cave in completely by getting the same phone they had. I chose the Windows phone. It was also $25.00 extra as opposed to the $199.99 to $249.99 Verizon charges for the iphone with a two year contract (I prefer to be called frugal instead of cheap). I did my research. The reviews for the phone where overwhelmingly positive. I am also positive that Bill Gates is using one instead of an iphone.

The first two weeks I had the phone I was adding apps, surfing the web, perusing Facebook, sending text messages and watching Netflix until 2:00 AM in the morning. It has occurred to me that the combined knowledge of every person alive or who has ever lived is now at my fingertips. The WWW makes the legendary Library of Alexandria look like a 1st grade primer. I can convert fahrenheit to celsius, acres to hectares, ounces to drams, see a satellite view of Toldedo, Ohio or Toledo, Spain from the comfort of my mattress. I can see the entire cast of Star Trek and read their resumes and see their head shots whenever I get a notion to do so, wherever I am.

Resistance is futile. As Matthew Broderick said in The Producers, "Stop the world! I want to get on". I can't wait to get implanted and join the collective. Typing on a virtual keyboard is so limiting. The Borg may have lousy complexions and have hardware and attennas sticking out of their bodies (which probably gets in the way of sex but with virtual pornography available who needs physical sex?) but you can tell they are as happy as a bug in a rug.

Note: This blog is dedicated to Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, who passed away this week at too young of an age. He was a brilliant visionary and will go down in history as one of the greatest innovators who has ever lived. My comparison of myself to Steve Jobs as a visionary was satirical in nature. Imagine what he would have brought to being if he had lived another 40 years.