Living Behind Screens

My first Fourth of July back in Vegas was rather low-key but enjoyable. Climbing on to a roof, we had a 360 degree view of everything from Green Valley Ranch to South Point Station to the Strip to the amazing display of questionable legality from the people across the street. Everything from the burst of dazzling lights, to the shimmer of fading glory, to the smell of sulfur that filled my nostrils was so reminiscent of childhood summers and stock American experience that I wanted to capture the moments and squirrel them away forever. I have been a tad gun shy with my camera, as of late, after the realization that it is not appreciated here as it was in Austin, but felt the urge and pulled it out tonight. Viewing the fireworks, filtered through the tiny digital screen, the situation struck me as ironic. Ironic because I was missing the beauty of the moment by trying to capture it.

I was no longer standing there, feeling the warm breeze wash over my legs or marveling at the majesty of the red burst set against blue-black, star strewn sky. I was fussing over settings, light gradients, and zoom qualities. Looking back at what I captured was nothing compared to the memory I could have made had I just stood there and been checked into the moment. I think it is time that each of us should ponder how what happens on the screens in our lives have begun to push aside and supersede the things that go on in the actual, nondigital world that surrounds us.

The screens we yearn to possess, have instead begun to possess us. In grocery stores and shopping malls all I see are kids, teens and adults walking with their faces straight down, all but oblivious to their immediate surroundings, fixated instead on the screens they hold in their palms. They smile, as if at a human being, while ignoring the sea of living people around them. Isolated in a crowd, they tap away at the tiny keyboard.

I am no less guilty of this. For the moment I wake to the time I lay my head upon the pillow, my phone is never more than three feet from me. I have the same crick in my neck from the straight down stare. I have my headphones in ever time I shop. I don't think I have heard a store employee greet me since the day I bought my first iPod. The last four days has shown me how far the problem extends. My new iPhone manifest a glitch in the hardware and became unpredictable. I could not text message, or check Facebook, or read emails. I felt like a heroine addict with an unreliable dealer. Is this an addiction, or merely the result of our ever shrinking attention span? Perhaps it is both.

Regardless, I cannot go anywhere without my phone. I am sure I am not the only one who has experienced this in the past. You leave home to go to dinner or to Starbucks or the movies, but once you arrive, you realize, to your horror, that you have somehow forgotten your phone. You are inadvertently phoneless, screenless, helpless. What is this? You start to feel vaguely jittery. You feel untethered and unreachable. You briefly consider actually leaving to go home to go your phone. How will you pass the time while the guy in front of you orders to most complicated coffee in the world? Will you really have to be checked in while you zig-zag your way through the grocery store? Will you have to make actual dinner conversation with your co-diner before the food comes? You are only going to be away from it for two hours, at most, yet you are going through classic withdrawal symptoms.

It is hard to remember, but we all seemed to get along pretty well in the days before the screens invaded our lives. We navigated life rather efficiently when we knew that once we left the house, no one would be able to reach us until we came back. We did not need constant connectability, the ability to be reachable at all time. We did not require ceaseless digital bombardment. Had it been offered all at once, instead of a gradual change to the world at large, we probably would have rejected it outright, like a first free taste of heroin.

Screens are in our lives everywhere; TV, movies, computers, phone, cameras, video games, etc. While we will never get away from them, we can for just a moment look away and experience our own lives in full, HD, 3-D color. Go ahead, try it. Look away from this screen. Look around you, out the window or across the room or down the street. Isn't it something? It looks so real, you half-believe you can touch it.