The Digital Cage

No one alive could possibly assimilate all the information with which we are bombarded in First World technological society. Not to say that we should envy the simple life in the pre-electronic, still developing world, but to see toddlers on iPads is stunning. We too often seem to have smart phones being used by dumb people. What did we do before we had the Internet constantly at our fingertips? As I remember, we won the Second World War, enjoyed relative prosperity, and even sent men to the moon before we were permanently attached to our information technology devices. We did not have Facebook, just good and fulfilling face-to-face relationships. We did not Skype, but many of us took up the adventure of physical travel to go see Grandma in some distant part of America, (and we always had that great love-affirming Sunday lower phone rate long-distance call) making seeing relatives in another state all the more special. We did not have Google maps or a Global Positioning System but managed to find our way to and from without becoming lost in the woods. We certainly did not have ubiquitous surveillance systems overseeing our movements in both the real and virtual world (according to those doing the monitoring, for our own protection) but we did have something increasingly rare, unencumbered freedom.