Holy Shit, I'm Wired
~Django Durango

I used to be one of those people who sneers at cell phones. Not because people talking on them pissed me off, but because of the awful ringtones. They’re not so bad nowadays. Mine screams loudly then issues an obnoxious chainsaw noise. Something from the Texas Chain Saw Massacre, I believe. I’ve given up on trying to have it as anything else, as every time my dad borrows it, he changes it back to that.

I used to scoff at the idea of needing anything other than a pen and a notebook to work. Yet somehow, one day I woke up and, holy shit, I was wired. I now go to work with a zebra-print backpack that contains my laptop computer, the adapter for it, the hook up for my wireless keyboard (I broke my enter and D keys. Yes, it sucks badly), my cell phone, my iPod, and my digital camera for recording clips and vocal notes (yes, my camera does this. I was surprised too). I’ve still got notebooks, but really all they’re for is writing things down so I can transcribe them later as MS Word documents. None of these things actually have anything to do with the job I go to work to do (though that joint has it’s own technological gamut to run, albeit rather outdated one).

Used to be the most hi-tech thing I carried was a twenty-five dollar Timex pocket watch. Wasn’t even digital. (I’m too cool for that.)

It has occurred to me that there might be consequences to this. Mine and everyone else’s preoccupation with the latest gadgetry. It only recently really became apparent just how this might turn out when I started seeing people wearing those blue-tooth cell phone things in their ears. My dad got one recently. He had it in his right ear and was talking on it when he pulled up in the driveway one day. The window looking out to the driveway allows you to see him from the left side. I watched him sit there for about five minutes and thought he was talking to himself the whole time. I went out to check on him. Of course, I ended up looking the fool in that one.

You see, one of my favorite comic books, Transmetropolitan, is filled with shit like that. People walking around with “blue-teeth” in their ears, people with glasses that take pictures, people with telephones actually taken orally in pill form and accessed through an optical nerve or some shit like that. It’s sort of daunting when you look at where this might go. Everyone completely dependant on their technology. They actually address the prospect, though it’s not really a major plot point. They have a bunch of hippies rope off a section of street, fry everyone’s tech, then force them to “remember how to be people”.

I am not afraid of losing my humanity to technology.

Of course, we could take this much further. Ever saw the cartoon Invader Zim? Yes, I know. Silly. But still. Zim is an adorable little alien who can produce a set of four spider-like appendages from what appears to be a small backpack that he wears. Among other things; lasers, shields, and organ teleportation devices included. This backpack is a miraculous bit of technology. So much so, that his entire species is equipped with them standard. They’re given them at birth. If you separate the body from the machine, the body will die within ten minutes. They are completely dependant on this piece of machinery to live.

I’ve read a lot of fanfiction that would suggest that they might even be controlled by their own government through the things, which is fairly plausible. They are a military state, after all. Emotional regulators, behavioral monitors, tracking devices, you name it, I’ve seen it suggested in fanfic.

The prospect has become much more real than it would’ve seemed back in, oh, ’96 when I first started using the Internet. If we look at it this far ahead in the road, it would seem we are at risk of losing even more of the precious freedom all those pinko hippy types would have us believe we’d trade willingly in exchange for the feeling of safety.

I need not feel safe simply because the government knows where I am at all times.

However, I can’t say the idea of being able to fire a laser through an attacker, throw up a defense shield, and scuttle away on my spider legs wouldn’t make me feel a bit more secure.