Saturday, March 29, 2008

Cyber Insanity

Occasionally, my mind gets trapped in a vortex of cyber insanity contemplating how much of my life occurs out there in cyperspace. I sit at my keyboard and hit keys and little letters appear on the screen. In e-mails, those letters can be a bridge between family and friends, some of whom are thousands of miles away. The little blips of electricity venture out and, somehow, control where I go, how my money is spent and, occasionally, with whom, where and when I eat.

I've reconnected and stayed connected with people I haven't seen or, in some cases, thought about in years. Without my cyber connectivity, I would never pick up a phone to try to coordinate dinner with the several groups of friends, co-workers and relatives that I try to get all in one place one night a month for dinner or one day a week for lunch so that we can stay connected in a non-cyber way.

I've recently gone 99.9% currency free when it comes to my money matters. Every other week someone hands me a piece of paper (if I could get direct deposit, I wouldn't even have that physical connection to my filthy lucre), I drive it to my bank, they give me another piece of paper, I go home and sit at this machine and type in some of those same little electronic blips that I type into friendly e-mails and, voila, my water keeps pouring and my electricity keeps flowing.

Since they put those little debit card boxes at the window, I don't even touch money at Sonic or Jack in the Box anymore. I buy most of my movies, books and music online, I pay for my gas at the pump and for my groceries in the self-serve line and, sometimes, it all makes me a little cyberly insane if I stop and think about it too much.

Don't even get me started on how the job of a legal secretary has changed over the last twenty years because of e-mail, as well as, easily, the most mind-blowing, work place changing cyber invention of the 20th century: the fax machine.

Electricity. Electromagnetic fields. Gravity. Mind. Vortex. Blown.

Blip.

13 comments:

Alyson | New England Living said...

That's funny. I really haven't thought about that, but it's true. By the way, thanks a lot for mentioning Jack in the Box and Sonic. I miss those places so much and my stomach is growling just thinking about it! Lucky!

Susan in St. Paul said...

I like it!

If it wasn't for the internet I wouldn't have met you!

Larry Jones said...

Well said, Laurie. There are a lot of people (born after you and me) who've never known a world without those things*, so they take them in stride, but we are actually living through what may be the most profound transition yet to happen to humanity. We should be forgiven if it makes us a little crazy at times.
______________________________
*Unless Cheney and Bush get us all blown back to the stone age.

Adela said...

Girl! You are so right.

George said...

Yeah, but you oughta see us staring at each other in our office when the power goes out.

In a previous life, a friend would ask the newly engaged guys in our office to see how much cash they had in their wallets. All had lots of cash to show. A few weeks later, after the wedding, he asked the same question, and almost universally, none of them had any cash.

Wonder what his single-to-married test is now? Debit card receipts?

OldHorsetailSnake said...

Remember when everybody HAD to have a Polaroid camera? And now hardly anybody does. I can't imagine the Fax being replaced, but surely there's somebody thinking about it.

Lorna said...

This is so eerie....in my much less funny, more didactic way, I talked about the same thing today. And I did it before I read your post

George said...

I can't even think of a fax I've received in the last three years. We usually e-mail PDFs.

Laurie said...

Alyson - You're welcome. :)

Susan - Very true!

Larry - I totally agree.

Adela - :)

George - How funny! :)

Old Horsetail - We were talking about Polaroid cameras just the other day.

Lorna - See! We're still psychically connected. :)

George - That's true. I do that, too. I forgot about that.

Anonymous said...

I glanced at this in my feed reader last night right before I went to bed. Then, I had all these crazy dreams about the future and aliens...and blips. Blips. Blips. Blips.

It freaked me out.

TexasGal said...

I know. I try to think back to what we did before email at work. So strange.

Grimm said...

Remember back at the beginning of 2000 when everyone thought the electronics would all go bezerk and you would lose of your money and stuff? Good old Y2K.

The wife and I are avid users of the debit users and even have the direct deposit - so technically, I never see my money anymore.

Sigh.

Laurie said...

Leslie - Hahahah! Sorry!!

Texas Gal - No kidding!

Grimm - Everyone was too prepared for Y2K. The disaster everyone expected will happen one day, but nobody will see it coming. You read it here first.