No, Donny, it's not going away, but the thing that seems to be vanishing is young people's ability to communicate directly with other human beings without the crutch of a smartphone, Ipad, etc... They tend to hide behind those inanimate objects, say things texting that they would never say to a person's face, and lose their sense of identity. Then, of course, the criminal element steps in, and the list of internet and cell phone crimes that currently take place is growing exponentially. IMO, we've gone so far backward in this nation that it will really be difficult to turn things around, and often in the name of technology.
I saw where our school systems have now taken cursive writing in schools, which I think is all part of dumbing down our youngsters. When I was a kid, you could not bring a slide rule to school, because it was considered cheating when doing math. Slide rules were not permitted back then till you got into college and engineering school. Now, every kid is school would feel like he or she was mentally handcuffed if they didn't have an I-pad so they could Google every topic. Unfortunately, there are loads of kids now that cannot read enough to comprehend anything other than abbreviated text jargon. That's pretty damned sad.
Right now, as I type this diatribe, I'm sitting on my sailboat, stuck in the mud waiting for high tide so I can get back into my slip and moor the boat. I spent most of the day with my wife sailing in 20-knot winds on Chesapeake Bay, enjoying the beautiful fall weather, clear blue skies and watching American eagles soar overhead in search of a fish that happened to get too close to the water's surface. Most of today's youngsters will never enjoy, or embrace this kind of magic. Instead, they'll have their eyes glued to their Smartphones, while wolfing down high carb junk food from a fast food restaurant. They're eating there because their parent don't know how to cook, and more often than not the parent - not parents, have embraced that same technology that is now dumbing down their children. They were raised by a TV set, never heard of Home Economics in school, it has been gone for years, and the instructions for cooking are now on the back of the box. 3-minutes on high, stir, 2 minutes on high, let sit for 2 minutes before eating.
When I was in the grocery store last night, I noticed that in Giant, there were three full rows of frozen food freezers, all of which were meals in a box. The good stuff, the fresh meats and veggies, were all the way at the other end of the store. You had to pass through 20 isles of prepackaged foods to get to stuff that you actually had to cook. No wonder McDonalds, Burger King, Hardies, Red Lobster, Black Angus, etc... are packed to capacity with families every night of the week. No ONE CAN COOK! THEY DON'T KNOW HOW! But you can bet your ass they know every application that's available for their cell phones. However, while they're slowly consuming that huge volume of carbohydrates, salt, fat and calories they never seem to know there is someone sitting directly across the table from them - They have their damned eyes glued on that tiny screen, texting with one hand while trying to eat a Bloomin' Onion with the other.
So, Donny, you can have my portion of all that new technology. I might even turn on my cell phone today, but probably not. I would rather just sit here and wait for the incoming tide, sip a cold Coors Light, and talk with Carol about our upcoming trip to the sunny south this winter. Next week, I'll have my daughter and grandson out here with me, we'll get some nice photos of the wildlife, sail down the bay, and I'll grill some burgers on the boat's gas grill. But if I didn't have gas, I would switch to charcoal, or maybe make a nice wood fire in the grill with some hickory sticks and grill them the old fashioned way - damned the old fashioned way sure tastes pretty good.
Enjoy that technology,
Gary
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