Midterm: completely attached

Last week, while waiting for my mom at Dunkin Donuts, I had an eye-opening experience. I sat down at a table and immediately took out my cell phone to check the time and to text some friends while I was alone (mostly because I had nothing else to do but wait). An old man came up to me, tapped me on the shoulder, pointed to my cell and said, "What would you do without that thing? You'd probably be lost!" To be a good sport I laughed and agreed. This made me look at cell phones through his eyes. His generation probably views mine as being technology obsessed and dependent on the technological luxuries we can afford. I suppose we seem a bit spoiled, but to a certain extent cell phones have become a necessity in several ways. People use their cells for professional, social, and emergency purposes. Personally, I've used it in all three ways, so my cell phone has really become an important tool in my daily life.

This reminded me of McLuhan's idea that technology or media becomes an extension of ourselves. He stated that human beings now wear "its brain outside its skull and its nerves outside its hide" in the form of media, which extends our senses. I have very much come to feel that my cell phone is a part of me. It's just another mode in which I can communicate with people and gather information. McLuhan seemed to think that technology creates the social and media environment, and I think that the cell phone has made these two environments portable. Even though I was technically alone in Dunkin Donuts, I didn't feel lonely because I had my friends in the palm of my hand. Everyone was one text or dial away. It's obvious that these days people have the need to constantly be connected, and the older gentleman that spoke to me doesn't feel that impulse because cell phones weren't around when he was my age. Therefore, he never cultivated the social need for it.

I honestly freak out if I don't have my cell phone. I get paranoid because if something bad happens, I won't have a way to get help. For instance, over the summer my car kept on dying. It died on me several times in the middle of a busy street and I was lucky enough to have my cell, otherwise I would've been in a lot of trouble. Also, if I didn't have my cell, I think I would feel very left out and lonely. The man was right; I would be lost without it.