what were we before?

What were we before?


Have you thought about how we used to handle real life situations? You remember it was easy to make a friend or talk to a complete stranger? Or how we were able to find one another? What’s my address? Who am I or who are you? Or let’s go deeper, who are we? And what have we become?

I remember when I was about 12 years old. I would go with my friends to the Arcade. The Arcade, a place where it was full of loud noise of video games: Donkey Kong, Asteroids, Pac-Man, 1943, Frogger, and my all time favorite, TRON! Those were the days, when me and my friends would beg our parents for $5 dollars to get tokens to play video games for hours. But the Arcade was also a social scene: you had punks, video jockeys, players, girls, music, the latest fashion action gear (aka, Addidas,) un-necessary peer pressures and a clock in the middle of this arcade to remind you when it was time to go home. But one day, someone came up an idea to make a computer where you could play games at home instead of wasting money at the Arcade. The thought of having a personal computer almost knocked me over. My parents saw it as a good educational investment, considering that even back then, my parents kinda had an idea of the futuristic information age.



Even with this personal computer, I was able to play games, make up certain programs and even it was illegal back then, make copies of games and sell them to kids at my local junior high school. There were some who were able to go so far as hacking into certain systems, to change grades or make financial decisions for others or for themselves. This was way before today’s notion of hacking or terrorism. Of course, when I asked my parents about getting a modem, which was about 300 baud, imagine that now?!



The movie, War Games was just the beginning of society attack on the youth. The very thought that the youth could have the control of the destiny of mankind. Not only were my parents were concerned about the possibility of having the CIA or the FBI kicking in our suburban home, but even the other parents in our small neighborhood would have meetings about this 300 baud modem and the dangers from this device.

Since the thought of a young 13 year old boy with no chance of getting girlfriend, was sitting in his room planning to destroy mankind, my parents like most, decided to get me an Atari 2600. Wow! More games, more fun! Though the graphics were not as snazzy like my commodore 64, but still provided a change from using the computer. Even with the commodore 64 and Atari 2600, the Arcade was still the hang out.

You remember when that one neighbor, the rich classy type who had something way superior to the VHS. VHS? What could be better than VCR. Yes, of course it was the super VHS. I mean, VHS was way better than BETA! BETA was like having 8-track radio player in your car. The Audio cassette tape is the latest invention, get with the times! Ha! That classy neighbor movie was on laser disc! Wooooooo! Laser disc! Supposedly, the movies were crystal clear and you can pause the movies with ultimate clarity. But, only a few of us were privileged to witness such event, because that neighbor’s kids were a bunch of jerks and elitist.

How many of us remember this guy? Of course you do! That was the day, when you could be hanging out with a friend and all of sudden, you hear this beeping noise and that friend has to run to a pay phone to call the number on his beeper back! The Pay-Phone folks! Yeah, you remember that guy?

It seemed around this time that the level of communication was lagging. You couldn’t keep a conversation going without hearing that beeper going off. In fact, don’t you remember when the one beeper went off, everyone started checking his or her pockets or jackets? Of course, later on, having a beeper meant also that you were selling drugs. For me a guy working for Swiss Bank and the Brotha hustling drugs were, well in my mind, the same guy, but living in two different sides of town. Sorry, just my opinion!

Now what about this guy?! You remember seeing that business guy who would have a portable size public phone attached to the side of his face. Yeah, folks that was the pimp style cell phone back in the day. Of course having such pimp-super flya playa type of cell phone was very costly. $8.00 dollars a minute was the standard and probably the cheapest for the times.

Now, what the hell do we have? Once upon a time, we would see a person walking and talking to himself. Automatically, we were told that person must be mentality ill or got a few screws loose. It was accepted knowledge to believe in such notion. What do we see walking around the streets or people in passing cars? They call it today’s communication fashion statement, the infamous ear piece headset. Once upon a time, we would have stopped everything we were doing in order to see the guy who was having a full on conversation by himself. And now, we just accept the notion that there is strong possibility that he is speaking with a colleague on his ear-cell phone headset without any thought that person might actually be NOT speaking with anyone on the his cell phone.

Cell Phones are everywhere and they are destroying nature and natural connection between people. Go the movie theater, during the previews, you will have some guy arguing with his girlfriend on the phone about how we broke her wine glass. Or what about those wanna-be hikers who buy all their clothes from REI? They got their special gear, boots, hats and hiking sticks, even though the terrain is flat as pancakes, somehow, they manage to bring along their blackberry and talking to their broker on the phone about some property they have in Nevada! Or what about those who carry a GPS with them? Don’t get me wrong, if we were hiking around some real deep dark forest region around Montana or up in Western Canada with dirt roads and the last human face we saw was about 4 hours ago. Hell, let’s use the GPS to figure out how to get out of this place! But do we ever find ourselves in these situations? Really, do we? No! We don’t!

Just like the lack of Arcade hang outs, fast pace computers, wireless connections, cell phones, ear-piece or not, we are not the same people like we were just less than 10 years ago. We are not in the information age. We are in the individual age. We have individualized our section of the world. We place names and numbers within a small memory space in a cell phone. If you loose your cell phone, will you remember your best friend’s number? What is your sister’s address? When was the last time you wrote someone a letter? Not an e-mail! A letter! Postcards are now a zipp file!
As much as I can point out the lack of human interactions, I would be foolish to tell you that I am not guilty. Like many of you, I am a part of this new world and I make an effort to do things on my own without needing a gadget to help me find my way around or back the way I just came.

Let’s find one another, the natural way. Let’s meet at the same place. . . . .