While our eyeballs are trained perpetually downward at iPhones, Sidekicks, MotoQ's or any other miniscule, glowing screens, causing the population to sprout multiple chins and endangering oncoming pedestrians and/or vehicles (replacing the act of looking south to avoid stepping in dog offal. I mean, that we're still dealing with that scourge alone is enraging and can't Bush appoint a Canine Shit Czar before he leaves?), our thumbs toggling away to send abbreviated texts and comic book smiley faces to equally inane queries about "whatchu up 2?" and "r u ok?", the real world thrums over our declined heads with nary a whoosh to distract them.
Navel-gazing has gone cyber-global and introspection goes no further than vanquishing hordes of the undead or listening to disposable pop tripe while muscularly thumbed masses tune out the white noise that constitutes Life. Since the current evolutionary development of homo sapiens permits them to see only as far as their sweet tooths or their wallets, the virtual obliteration of educational material from the mainstream creates a gaping void in the collective consciousness that is capped by drivel utterly devoid of meaningful substance, the very stuff that would lend perspective to current events. Like pixels viewed up close, they have no discernible function other than to mimic a 3D crystalline structure that we might've found in the real world had we looked up from our sternums. But pull away and you begin to see it's place in the scheme of things. It begins to make sense. It is the shiny, dangling bait on the colossal hook. "Look down here" means "don't look up here".
Great strides in technology have translated to great leaps in passivity. Yes, yes, yes, modern technology is a marvel, having impacted scientific research, medicine, blah frikkin' blah blah. But the spread of these advances has become literally viral, the high-tech equivalent of athlete's foot, and just as beneficial to humanity. While my own typing skills have improved dramatically, I can barely hold the gaze of anyone asking me the time. And with so many more sources of radiation held at such dramatic propinquity, we're potentially creating a new way to communicate with each other and unify the disparate sects that make up our divided, misanthropic society. A new, cool tool that will cease thumbs a-toggling and set hearts and minds a-throbbing:
It's Tumor-Vision.
Imagine everyone being riddled with misshapen lumps and irregularly bordered moles and looking cock-eyed and walking at strange angles, all due to the incessant exposure from radiation emanating from every computer and television and phone and iPod screen combined! Imagine everyone experiencing the same spreading aches and surprised by the same rogue twinges from the malignancies that would thrive in our lymphatic systems and our brains, muscles, bones and skin! Why, there would be no more racism! No more class struggle! No more runway models! No more war! We'd all have tumors! We'd be free from the yoke of comnsumerism! Free from the stinging lash of materialism! Free! Free! Halleberry! I mean, Hallelujah!
As I lie back on the grassy knoll, staring dreamily into the brown sky, I want to shout my earth shattering epiphany to the world:
wan2tlk ; )?