A new record—sixteen people belonging to various races and nationalities (Cyberia’s human diversity is unequalled!) seated in a row and gazing into or thumbing their digital devices.
Occasionally, evolution tends to move backward rather than forward. For example, opposable thumbs gave our species the ability to manipulate a wide variety of objects, but those thumbs now seem to be manipulating only mobile technology.…
In disbelief, I counted again, but this time there were only fifteen in a row … since one of the Cyberians had just gotten off the train.
Recent studies indicate that the brains of Internet addicts contain almost the same amounts of abnormal white matter as the brains of alcohol and drug addicts.
And like addictive drugs, digital-type devices create their own demand. That’s because the buyer is already hooked on the product …
… like a birder friend of mine. Using an app on his iDevice, he succeeded in identifying a semipalmated plover on Cape Cod’s Sandy Neck beach in six minutes, while it took me less than a minute to identify the same bird using my app-free guidebook.
Undaunted, my friend told me that he would soon be getting an app for flowering plants, too.
Another example: So riddled with anxiety was the teenage Cyberian when she lost her cellphone that she scratched her face and arms until they bled and, unaware she was bleeding, continued to scratch herself even more.
The girl happened to be the daughter of another friend. “It’s not the end of the world,” my friend said to her, referring to the lost phone. “Yes, it is!” the girl cried.
Many Cyberians can no longer function without their devices. An example: An e-businessman’s smartphone had all his travel information on it, including the name of his hotel, so when he left that smartphone in his hotel, he had no idea where he was staying, and he wandered the streets of Philadelphia, lost.
Remember the genetic modification of arctic char isolated on Tukarak Island? Sitting continuously behind desktop computers could eventually give our own species a zigzag morphology, while the constant use of iDevices could make us resemble chickens pecking at their feed … or slouched-over corpses.
Corpses, by definition, are dead to the world.