So this fall I joined a kickball league in New Haven, that wonderful childhood sport that we all loved to play, mostly baseball with a soccer twist. I had never heard of the league till one of my friends who plays on my dart team told me about it and invited me to join his team. Much to my surprise, it is not just a local league, but rather a nation wide phenomenon with a national championship in Las Vegas. The biggest difference from the childhood sport we loved so much is the addition of beer, not officially condoned while playing, but a staple if you look around the field and see all the plastic red cups being held by the players. You must be 21 to play as the sport is sponsored by a local pub. Afterwards, all the teams gather at this pub and play flipcup (a drinking game for those not in the know.) Personally, I am past the days of playing flipcup, but I love the kickball. Regardless, I am not going to talk about kickball for this entire post, I just wanted describe the revised sport a little for those that are not familiar with it. The reason I mention kickball as I segue into cell phones is because of a certain phenomenon that I witnessed at the field. What I saw was a new body part attached to a number of the players; cell phones. Keep in mind, it wasn't the whole team that had this new attachment, but rather 3 or 4 players, enough to catch my attention and innately bother me.
From the moment I got to the field, these players seemingly had their cell phones glued to their hands, constantly looking down at the screen regardless of what was going on around them. There were a few moments where they were somehow able to detach the cell phones from their hands, play the game, and cheer on their team, but in general, those moments didn't happen that often. They weren't talking on the phones, or texting for that matter. What they were doing was constantly checking the scores of football games that were going on. After all, we do play the games on Sunday's in the fall, and it is football season, so what could I have been thinking? From casually looking at these players, you would think they were agents with a player in a major game; but no, they were just fanatics with no real interest in personal interaction. It seemed to me that their life would not be complete without constantly checking the scores of the games, what had just happened, who had scored, or who had gotten injured. Maybe they had money on the game, who knows? I for one didn't care enough to ask. And as much as I have talked about people being glued to their cell phones throughout the day, I hadn't figured it would spread as far as ignoring friends during a kickball game.
I had always known there was an enormous fascination with football by a large number of men in this country, but how far does it go? Will there come a day when we can get brain implants that are specifically tuned to football games to alert us that something happened? What then, will we be able to blink our eye in a specific pattern to bring up a display in front of us with a spread sheet of stats and mini videos of the action? How I hope that never happens, but with the way technology is going these days, I am not so sure that it won't be here soon. To me it is just one more step towards full integration of humans with technology. A full symbiotic combination that defies everything we thought we knew in the past. I guess I just don't get it. I have never said, nor will I say here, that technology is a bad thing, it is all in how we utilize technology. There is a line that seems to be crossed more and more these days where we people are using technology too much, making it too much a part of their lives, closing out others around them from meaningful interactions. My biggest fear is that there will come a time when no one is able to communicate without texting or utilizing some technology that assists them in communicating. (In fact, a friend of mine was telling me that during a photo shoot where a he had a couple young kids standing across from each other at a table helping him, they were texting each other instead of talking). It comes down to the fact that many people have simply forgotten how to talk to one another. But enough about cell phones and their attachment to the human body, I am going to get off this computer now, eat some breakfast, and actually talk face to face with my wife. What a novel concept.
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