E-volution and the lives of a cell(phone)

BELIEVE it or not, once upon a time, we didn’t have cellphones. At lunch tomorrowyesterday with fellow journalists and PR friends while covering a gaming event, I got to talking about how back in the days before everyone had cellphones, people had to be more diligent in keeping their appointments, whether personal or official business.

Think about how we go about our appointments nowadays. Maybe you’re running late, so you text the person you’re meeting. Maybe you reset the meeting if something has come up, or you change the venue. Heck, you might not have even set a time and venue, as you and the person you’re meeting might just agree to text each other throughout the day to say when you’re free and where you’ll meet.

It’s second nature to us now, but things weren’t always like this. In the years BC (Before Cellphones), you basically had no way of knowing if a person was just running late, or wouldn’t show up at all. Sure, some people had pagers, but since it isn’t two-way, it was hard to contact people if you had to change plans, or for them to contact you back. You had to wait for people and then decide how many minutes or hours it would take before it means na-indyan ka.

I lived through those dark ages, but even so I almost find it impossible to remember how we were able to set meetings and conduct transactions back then. Of course, the world moved at a much slower pace back then, but still, how in the world did we meet at all, especially in the face of Filipino time?

It shows how all these changes in technology are also rewiring our brains. We think nothing of setting several meetings a day, and to keep juggling different tasks. We can now afford to be more spontaneous. And yes, sometimes we also take it for granted that we can keep in touch whenever we want, so we might end up becoming even tardier, or resetting meetings several times a day.

And the thing about rewiring ourselves is that it’s hard to go back to the old days, the old rhythm. At our lunch yesterday, we remarked at how patient we were with dial-up connections, mobile phones without caller ID, or PCs with no color monitors. But then again, back then these were cutting-edge and we hadn’t experienced anything better. Yet now that we’re used to broadband, going back to dial-up is almost unbearable. Ignorance is bliss, I guess. It’s like Adam and Eve: once they tasted the fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, they could never regain their former innocence.

If it’s rewired our brains this much, think how different our children’s minds will be. My five-year-old daughter Sam grew up on broadband and different gadgets. To her, dial-up is the novelty.

It’s a whole new generation. It’s e-volution, baby.

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