I was four years late to the Nintendo party every preteen had been a part of since the NES was released in 1985, until Christmas morning, when Santa brought me my very own system complete with Super Mario Bros., Duck Hunt, and the new Power Pad Olympic games. Honestly, it was the last thing I’d expected to find under the tree. Of course, I’d heard of Nintendo, but had no desire to own one. Up until that point, my video game awareness was limited to that of playing Q-Bert on my neighbor’s Atari or Pac-Man at the Pizza Hut arcade. Neither of which I was very good at. Video games, on the whole, I found stressful and confusing, and being that I was already notorious for mini meltdowns, the last thing I needed was additional stress. But here I was the proud owner of a new NES. After several hours of working out the details with my little sisters in tow, I realized that Super Mario Bros. was a tad nerve-wracking, Duck Hunt was easiest one foot from the screen, and the Power Pad, unfortunately, required physical exertion. It was obvious this NES was my parent’s attempt to better assimilate me with the land of popular kids and trick me into exercising. Despite my reluctance, I found myself glued “Indian style” in front of the TV, soda by one knee, a bowl of cheeseballs by the other (the Power Pad now officially ousted to the closet) playing for what seemed like days straight, unbeknownst to me, caught in the headlights of the electronic age.
Still, my technological prowess remained limited to Mario’s extra lives and warp levels until 1996, when, at the behest of my then good friend, Michael, I forked over the $996 I’d saved since my high school graduation for a refurbished eMachine, more with the intention of impressing Michael than ever using the thing. After all, what business did I have on the internet? Email? Please, I hardly ever got phone calls. Knowledge? I’d just as soon go to the library and, wait for it…read a book. But just as with the NES seven years earlier, in no time I was spending hours fighting my Dad for the phone line so I could dial in to AOL and chat with friends. It’s not that it was that much different than if I’d just picked up the phone and called, but being online was innovative and fashionable, two things I rarely was, so why not? Plus, I could talk to friends while listening to CDs, watching movies or best of all, eating. My world, like so many others at that time, evolved to one filled with chatrooms, IMs, and buddy lists alive with sound effects of doorbells and door slams, as friends signed on and off. Mr. AOL’s “You’ve Got Mail” became the anthem for my arrival at technology’s threshold. This was a golden time. A time when owning a computer was a luxury rather than a requirement and my mood wasn’t contingent on how many people liked my Facebook status. I had my online chats and IMs, my select few preferred websites, but beyond that I lived a sans DSL, iPhone free, iPod less existence.
Obviously these luxuries, all of which I now enjoy, didn’t appear under my pillow by way of the tech-fairy. It’s a prison, albeit an enjoyable one, but prison none the less of my own design. What I couldn’t have realized in 1996, but realize all too well now, is that with all wonderful technological advances comes an additional price we must pay: dehumanization. And while I’m all for avoiding the public as much as anyone, surprisingly there are instances in which confronting the outside world is something I miss; being that I’m a movie bug, most notable of these is having a variety of video stores to visit. Naturally, in the VHS vs. DVD sense of the word there are no more video stores, but I’m talking about the absence of your friendly neighborhood movie rental establishment: Primetime Video, Movie Gallery, 2 Day Video, Video Update, Hollywood Video, the list is endless, even the once almighty Pokémon trainer “Gotta Buy Em’ All” Blockbuster is at risk. I only hope that Movie Trading Company, Entertainmart and Family Video can withstand the onslaught of Red Box and Netflix. Our reliance on the internet to bring us anything has begun to close off everything; not only video stores, but libraries, bookstores, music stores, arcades, anything that our media devices can offer.
Admittedly, pressing a button is far more convenient than trekking to the store for…well, anything. Why scavenge the thrift stores when you’ve got eBay? Why window shop when you can browse? Who needs CD Warehouse when we’ve got Amazon? It’s all too easy. And it’s what we wanted. It’s what we all had in mind from the moment we first unwrapped a Cars 8-track and thought, “This is so much better than vinyl!” Having made it through all of my public education without the crutch of readily available computers, cellphones, or mp3 players, there are so many instances when having these conveniences would have served me greatly, but there’s not a day that goes by that I’m not appreciative for having grown up without them. Sure it was problematic, but waiting hours by the radio to tape Ray Parker Jr.’s Ghostbusters or saving $25 for a lousy VHS copy of Look Who’s Talking are experiences I’ll always have a fondness for because it wasn’t easy. You wanted something, you had to work for it in a way that wasn’t contingent on internet connections or unused minutes. These are the stories I’ll one day bore my nephew with. What will be his walk six miles through the snow, barefoot story? What will be the legacy of suffering he has to broaden his appreciation of the finer things? All these devices, all of these luxuries were meant to enhance our lives, not run them…not enable laziness. At this point, writing for my own internet blog, I’m too far gone to even save myself.
“The problem’s plain to see, too much technology. Machines to save our lives. Machines dehumanize.” – Styx
Post Traumatic 