Posthuman Blues

I think America's infatuation with cell-phones and Palm Pilots is symptomatic of a profound loss of identity. Supposedly these devices make life easier, and there's no question that, in the right hands, they do. But I see hordes of people meandering along sidewalks and in the aisles of stores speaking avidly into their "designer" headsets and stroking LCD screens with ergonomic styli and I'm forced to conclude that this is an _illness_. Listen to these people. They have nothing to say. They make arbitrary (and usually lengthy) "field reports" to their spouses, telling them precisely where they are, why they're there, and how long they intend to be there. Then they request the same information from the person on the other end of the connection.

This isn't interactivity. This isn't rational behavior in an information ecology. It's an exercise in applied banality, an attempt to automate existence into post-cerebral oblivion.

Maybe, given enough time, human brains will atrophy to accommodate handheld communications devices. Everyone will wander the Starbucks-infested landscape bristling with GPS gear, pedometers, cellphones (and their endless color-coordinated accessories), digital cameras, and palmtop computers (all of which, of course, are obsolete in approximately three and a half days). The brain will no longer be needed. Like the victim of William S. Burroughs' "talking asshole," their eyes will take on the dull, incognizant luster of a crab's at the end of a stalk.