The 21st century: How’s that been working out?

Instead of a retrospective commentary on all the major events of 2017, I thought it better to look back at the entire 21^st century.  We’ve been living in the ’teens now for almost a decade, most of us born back in the 1900s; learning, buying and updating new tech every year; rather easily accepting social change like gay marriage,  legalized marijuana, and admitting to smart phone and social media addictions.  So far it’s been a century of … adapting.

At the turn of the century, we could see where we were heading as far as the World Wide Web and even cell phones with cameras.  We knew practically every home would have a computer if not one for each family member as well as school classrooms for every student.  We could see that every book would be electronically converted for reading online—as well as every book ever written, every song ever recorded.  With websites, social media like Myspace, and YouTube, we could foresee the day everyone would indeed be famous for at least fifteen minutes.  We could see that each of us would become more independent as far as shopping and paying bills online, watching new movie releases via computer, and—most importantly perhaps—reading and researching scads of information, articles (real and fake), blogs and websites (official and unofficial) courtesy of the internet.  What we did not foresee in that last futuristic insight, however, was how divided our nation would become politically, empowering extreme thoughts and action from the ‘alt right’ and socialist left.  Americans of the 21^st century do not seem to share the same basic democratic philosophy and values of our country’s Founding Fathers.

2001 tech odyssey

In the year 2000, I had yet to own a computer.  I didn’t even know how to get online or surf the web.  My only experience was at work where I used computers since the 1980s, learning to handle a mouse in 1992.  The small-town newspaper where I later worked had one new big computer that a newly hired computer technician would operate to put together an online edition.  We reporters would ask the computer tech to print out news stories, research figures, or phone numbers of people we needed to interview if we couldn’t find such information ‘old school’—because the computers in the newsroom were not suited for internet connection.  Too, the computer guy would print out any emails we received.  Reporters each had a work email address tacked onto our published articles and sometimes received email but had no computer on our desks to check such correspondence.

By 2001 not only did I own my first home computer (a blue Mac), started paying a monthly internet bill of $10, and created my first personal email address, but the newsroom also got the same computers.  Finally at work we had the internet at our fingertips.  I relished checking The New York Times every day as well as double check spellings of people, places and things, historic dates, facts and figures.  I also enjoyed surfing the net for entertainment websites, from Lucille Ball to Loretta Lynn, The Beatles to The Rolling Stones—whatever popped into my pretty little head.  The whole world was at my fingertips … I imagine everybody on the planet with internet access felt the same way at this point in human history.

Later that year I had moved to a big-city paper and not only was handed a laptop for the first time but also given a cell phone with an assigned phone number and expected to have at hand 24/7.  I was elated, feeling part of our fast-paced modern times, my own era.  Then suddenly right after 9/11, many websites were down like The New York Times, and network news was covering only this American terror story of the century.  New information was not coming across the internet as fast as everybody wanted and expected coast to coast.  We were thrown back into a dark age of sorts, realizing our modern times without internet, satellite and electronic technology.  We may have feared a bit, but within a few weeks life and high tech went on.  Within the decade, Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone and iPad—both turning out to be must-have technology for all consumers, adults to children.

Best of times, worst of times

So far the 21^st century has brought into the collective consciousness the best and worst of Man simultaneously: perpetual wars yet life-saving medical advancements; the first African-American president followed by a successor voted in to dismantle his legacies; commonplace mass shootings here in the U.S. while millions of citizens march on world capitols for social and government reform; men of ultimate power and prowess brought down by women who alleged sexual harassment; a plethora of internet fake news stories alongside crucial investigative reporting of the truth; police shootings of unarmed black men, many captured on camera, giving birth to fiery protests and national alarm; hacked websites and internet interference to alter elections as people vote on dubious computer ballots; presidential candidates knocking the U.S. government, one for favoring the rich over the poor, the other for favoring the poor over the rich.  Incredulously, the latter won—and has never ceased to Tweet up a storm.

Nowadays with everyone using 21^st century technology—tech that when built is only meant to last three months before another advancement and necessary replacement—it seems there is a lot of static in the air.  We can hear it on cable news with arguments left and right and see it throughout the day with an onslaught of online stories and instantaneous imagery.  It’s as if we don’t know what to believe anymore.

This is because we read online only what we want to read, see only what we want to see, believe what we want to believe.  With all the internet travel and social media fads, we’ve left our brain on auto pilot—everything happening so fast.  No time to think.  Just react.  The Information Age has become … no way to live.

Remember the 1900s?  How simpler life was then?  Why, just the last part of the century, what technology did we have to have: telephone answering machines, electric typewriters, word processors, VCRs, CDs and CD players, Walkman, Pong?  More importantly, for those of us who can recall those olden days, we had more time.  Who would have thought it about the late 20^th century, because we were warned then that technology was advancing too quickly and would leave humanity in a tailspin, many incapable of keeping up?  Still we were able to live our lives ‘off line’ instead of online (there was no internet).  We never lost human contact because we left the home to shop and socialize, used our voices for conversation instead of typing disjointed thoughts to send rat-a-tat-tat as emails or Tweets.

In the year 2018 if we’re honest about how we’ve been using and abusing technology, we’ll admit to being frazzled, on edge, fearing everyone in the world even our own family and neighbors.  Our president, after all, is a reflection of us, and this era will go down in American history.  Don’t blame the latest cutting-edge technology, social media or fake news.  We’re the ones with the problem, the sickness, susceptible because we are humans with minds and souls.  All the uproar that has infected millions of us is contained within the mind.  The one thing we’ve seemed to have forgotten amidst all the fun and necessity of high tech is that technology is science: machines and wires, circuits and chips and binary code, and an on/off switch.  Humans are not machines, though machines are getting to be more like us.  Humans are not thinking beings who feel but emotional beings who think—a lesson to contemplate from The Twilight Zone that is the 21^st century.