Imagine

Growing up in a generation deeply dedicated to the evolution of technology, I have felt somewhat out of place. While I played my fair share of Super Mario Brothers as a child, I rarely spent time in front of a television set. I was never allowed to watch the "cool" shows like 'Beavis & Butthead' and I often turned the volume down to the slightest hum and watched 'Rin & Stimpy' in secrecy. Nowadays, my phone looks as if it is from the stone age and its uses are limited to texting and telephone calls. And voicemail. This is bliss simplicity compared to the friends of mine sporting glittering touchscreen devices and blackberries that seem to do everything my laptop can, but faster. I'm the last to know of any celebrity news and I will be quite honest, I did not know about the volcano eruption a few months ago until about four days after it happened. Not because I'm out of touch with society, but the single period of time I ever have to catch up on the news between school and work is grabbing a Creative Loafing on my lunch break, which ultimately leads to scribbling through the crossword for half an hour.

Imagine for a minute, living in a world void of wireless routers and even color television. No gps', ipods or, dare I say it, cell phones. That was as short a time ago as the 40's. Long before that, people received mail from the Pony Express and towns were small. Headline news probably went something along the line of "Outlaw Brawl at Local Saloon Leads to Shootout" and word of mouth was most typically a communities primary source of information. There was no texting a friend across the country at the first thought of a shared memory and the response being within the next minute. You couldn't google directions to the nearest Dairy Queen after watching a commercial for an all too appetizing Blizzard from wherever you happen to be in the world, much less from the palm of your hand. No dishwashers or dryers. No cars.

I'll let you in on a little secret...

people actually lived like this.