Project 4 Speech

Look at everything around you. Whether you are in a dorm room, a coffee shop, a mall, or even on a street corner. Look at everything around you. Go ahead, take a few seconds. Take notice of who is there and what is there. Specifically, look at the technology. People talking on their cell phones, listening to their iPods, video chatting on their computers, and surfing the Internet on their cell phones, iPods, and computers. Now imagine that scene you are looking at and if everyone’s technology suddenly stopped working. Picture people’s reactions if they were no longer able to be connected to anyone, anywhere, at any time. What about 24 hours from now, how will people act? A week? A month? Imagine this world without constant connectedness.

We live in a world where people need to have some form of technology with them at all times that connects them with everyone. It would be a catastrophic event if all of a sudden BOOM! no more Internet. No more Facebook, no more email, no more Twitter, no more websites that dictate our lives. It may be for the better, but the utter shock of no longer having something that you use every single day is cataclysmic. The stock market would not be able to crash because there would be no more stock market. All of society would fall apart.

            

I compare such an event to two people who have been dating for five years. They do everything together and their lives revolve around each other. Then one day they break up and are completely no longer a part of each other’s lives. There is now a huge gap in both of those people’s lives. If the Internet was suddenly taken away, there would be an enormous gap in everyone’s lives. No one would know how to react. There would be panic in the streets with people rioting. The technology that is suddenly gone is one that we have become so reliant on and one that is integrated into everything that we use and do.

             

Now that you are utterly scared of such an event, look back at the scene in front of your eyes right now. You see people walking around talking on the phone or you see your cell phone and computer on your desk. You see other people who live their lives on a technological, Internet crutch. But being as you are not them, you gotta ask yourself a question: Do I feel addicted? Well, do ya, cyberpunk?