Yes I Love Technology

So I have this little thing called Netflix, don't know if you've heard of it. I tend to overly trust Netflix's judgment and let them send me whatever recommended movies they so choose (not exactly how it goes but hey). So yesterday I received 'Like Water For Chocolate', a movie subtitled in English which so far as I can tell seems to be what that Sara Michelle Gellar movie "Simply Irresistible" was going for, except they failed miserably (the fact that I had to google, 'Sara Michelle Gellar' and 'cook' to find the title says a lot).

HOWEVER

It's from 1992 but might as well be from the 70's as far as I'm concerned, which made me realize.
Technology (in this specific instance, HD) has spoiled us.

Excuse me, but isn't it my god-given right as an american to be able to count the pores on that main character chicks face when they do that closeup crying scene? Shouldn't I be able to see the blades of grass swaying in the wind? And the zit they failed to cover sufficiently on the main dude who's supposed to be such a hunk? (not such a hunk, pffff a zit). You can't even watch a sporting event now without HD. Football on a normal tv?!? Fah-getta-bout-it. Guys make a big show of complaining about it like without an HD box you can't read the numbers on the jersey's or something. 'Fuckin cable! Now I can't even tell which team is which! This game is RUINED!' damn you HD, damn you.

Then there's music...

When I was home last weekend, I had to drive to Plymouth and thought I had no ipod converter for the car...it was devastating. The thought of driving 45 minutes listening to the radio was too much for me.

I almost forget about ONLY having the radio for oh, all of high school. That or CD's that you would burn before running out of your house for some trip because you always waited till the last minute to do it and it took like 20 minutes. And you always had to carry around a huge ass walkman and those black headphones and like 15 cd's in your bag. Now we can easily fit all8.5 billion of our songs into one little portable device. Being reduced to a mere 15 song lineup is unimaginable. How will I impress you with the breadth of my musical tastes? What if the mood suddenly changes from 'mellow' to 'party time!' and i dont have the appropriately themed playlist at hand? WHAT THEN? Phew. My ipod.

OR even BEFORE that when all we had was tapes. And you would have to sit there listening to the radio, waiting for your song to come on so you could record it. Or as Kim remembers, not being able to google lyrics and having to keep pressing stop and rewind to write them down.

Walking around a card shop in the village the other day I see address books and laugh. Seriously who needs an address book these days? You forget, i've entrusted my entire life to 4.8 ounces of steel and computer chips.

Not only is my entire life in my cell phone but the fact that we HAVE cell phones and internet is amazing. No more mom picking up the housephone and knocking you offline, when there was only 10 seconds left of the song you were downloading from napster. You know, the one that took 2 hours.

And technology has also made us think of privacy differently, cause, oh I don't know, we don't have any. Back in the day having a loud and lengthy conversation on a TRAIN would have been a no no. Now I have to spend 4 hours trying to use my music to drown out some story about Ally the boyfriend stealing tramp being broadcasting in the world's most annoying voice from the girl sitting next to me.

Not to mention myspace and facebook. I tried to see how long I could stay off of facebook and lasted like 3 days. What the hell would we do without digital pictures strewn about the internet, without total strangers being able to see what we look like, without creepy ass Facebook chat letting us see who else is being creepy at that very same moment?

Back in the AOL days it took 3 hours to load ONE picture never mind the 586 that were tagged last weekend. Its actually gotten so big that its being policed by companies, so something that was private (in the sense that only other hard partying college kids like yourself could see it) is now available to your 13 year old sister and your grandfather and also your future or not so future ("Is that a joint in your hand?") boss.

I figure its bad karma for us to give our parents crap about not being able to text message or IM because our time is coming. Like old folks who refuse to use cell phones and want to do it 'the old fashioned way' we will be arguing with our future children about how back in the day people parallel parked their OWN cars instead of letting the cars do it for them.

"Oh mom. You just dont understand technology."