Mobility or Useless Junk?

I take mobility for granted.


I definitely agree with Bernie that humans take mobility for granted and I finally realized this when I was left stranded on campus with a piece of rubbish also known as my cell phone. Recently, one of the AT&T towers on 113 stopped working. Whenever I tried to make calls it wouldn’t ring but instead it produced an echo of my voice. At first I just thought it was my phone but throughout the day I heard more and more students around campus complain about their phones not working. One girl was so frustrated that she started to cuss because she didn’t know how else to get a hold of her swimming coach. As for my situation, my roommate and I both have AT&T and she told me to call her after I finished work so she could come pick me. That plan didn’t quite work out. So I just decided to ride the bus home but she went on a wild goose chase looking for me on campus.

So I understand the frustration Bernie is going through with this laptop. We don’t realize how much we become dependent on our cell phone or laptop until it has stopped working. It was hard not being able to communicate through my phone and I felt like everything took twice as long to accomplish. I can’t imagine having to walk everywhere and not being able to ride the bus, drive my car, or ride my bike. I don’t want to have to live the stories that my grandparents used to tell of when they used to have to walk 5 miles in the snow to get to school. Cars, laptops, iPods, and cell phones are just some forms of mobility that help make our lives more efficient. They have become an everyday part of living just like eating and sleeping. We have become very dependent and we can’t or want to imagine our lives without these objects. However, when they stop working effectively they just become useless junk.

In the future, I wonder how children are going to take it if they are faced with being immobile. Young children, at the age of 7 already have cell phones. Phone companies have made various types of cell phones just for kids. I also see young children holding iPods and the iTouch all the time (side note: the word iPod has already passed spell check but iTouch hasn’t). Every time I see a child on the cell phone or playing on the laptop it amazes me because technology is hitting us at a younger and younger age. It comes natural to them when using a laptop or playing on their Nintendo DS. That is why I fear that future generations will become even worse when it comes to mobility. Perhaps one day our world will become similar to WALL-E where we depend on machines to transport us around and eating our meals from a cup rather than using our natural abilities of walking and cooking our own food.