Scary Times Ahead

I often sit back and think about how I wished I wasn't alive in this day and age. Sometimes I wish I wasn't part of the technology generation - I wish that I was part of the decade that had no tvs, internet, cell phones. I wish that I was part of a time where reading, using one's imagination, and spending time with family and friends was all that one did. What I mean is, hanging out at football games and having lots of school spirit, being taken in a classic car to the local diner where your food was roller-skated to you. I wish I could take that classic convertable with a gentlemanly hunk to the drive-in theatre. I wish times were different.

I did wish that I lived in the 30s-50s. I wish I lived through the sixties as well - when technology was there, but simply being introduced. Not overpowering lives as it does today.

I'll be the first to admit that I spend a great amount of time on the internet...it's like an addiction to all of these technology devices that have become so incorporated with our daily lives. I feel like I cannot escape - yet then again, I wonder if I want to. I enjoy that the whole world is at our fingers with the internet. I like that you can find out anything you want about anything. At the same time, however, I wish that the mystery of the world were still to exist. The world is still mysterious to me as I have never really traveled..I can look at pictures, I can see what seems to be this alternate world. I would rather go into an unknown place, having only heard stories about the places and read of their descriptions in novels. I want to hear what places are like only through the fables and stories of these faraway ventures.

I feel as if the world is no longer a mystery. It makes me feel as if I should remain a mystery myself, to not let too much known - so that I alone can bring back the sense of mystery to myself, at least,that I find the world so lacking.

I find the world becoming an increasingly frightening place. Innovations in technology both excite me and scare me to no end. In class we were watching a video about the Cuban Missile Crisis..the teacher says, "You all were almost not born." If these missiles were to be sent in each direction, destroying the entire United States, I certainly would not exist. The world would be devastated. And that was in 1962! If I get paranoid about something that happened in 1962, just imagine how I feel about how technology has grown, especially in the military department, I feel as if the world's demise could literally be any second. If a bomb were to be dropped that demolished an entire country - our country - the world would become that of one seen in the movies. I believe that one day the things, the movies we pay attention to for entertainment will coincide, eventually, with actual world happenings. It's entirely possible that a virus could abandon New York City like in I Am Legend. It's also very possible that a virus could spread across the world, forcing the only survivors to live underneath the ground in a world impenetrable by the virus, like in 12 Monkeys.

Call me crazy, but technology is becoming very intelligent. Which is very scary. Scientists in this article:

http://www.livescience.com/technology/090802-brain-body-replacement-parts.html

insist that they hope to be able to artificially create the intricacies of the brain within the next decade. Creating brains, limbs? I even read a similar article today about space crafts/shuttles actually being developed that create such an explosion over the sky that they allow one to travel across the world in 90 minutes. It says such technology would emerge in the coming years - under five. This astounds me.

I remain both astounded and frightened at such things being developed.

Oh, how the times have changed...and will continue to.