Good afternoon, Netizens...

 

If you are a fan of text messaging, you might as well ignore today's cartoon by David Horsey, or for that matter the personal muttering that accompanies it, for I do not use nor even appreciate text messaging for a number of reasons, including the obvious intention of this cartoon.

 

The first and most obvious objection I have to instant text messaging (and all its various flavors thereto) is the moment, which begins the minute you begin using it, is that it is not at all instant. Sure, I have seen kids with their fingers flying across infantile keyboards like a jackrabbit on the way to the cabbage patch, but for the majority of us doddering ancients with feeble fingers and arthritic joints, texting a simple message to someone can take forever. If you were to say to your dearly beloved Aunt Tillie that you loved her dearly and wanted her to move in with you, the spouse and all ten kids, aside from gulping at the thought of yet another mouth to feed, it would take less than a minute. However, putting that thought into a text message might take half an hour, perhaps longer depending upon Aunt Tillie, that is.

 

God forbid, whatever has happened to our ability to communicate without an electronic device hanging on our arm?

 

Worse perhaps than our increasing, growing dependence upon these devices by which we can text back and forth, most of the modern-day gadgets thinly disguised as cell phones come with a complete list of various other functions; distractions is more an apt phrase. You can play all manner of games, both offline and on, browse the web with all the madness that entails not to mention join the legion of macabre members of various online communities, such as Facebook. Once again, the online communities that ostensibly were for people to communicate with one another have turned out to be pillars of advertising for the various companies and agencies to sell more crap to people who already have more crap than they can realistically use.

 

In my lifetime I can recall the delightful hours spent sitting in the shade of the front porch rocking in the swing and talking with the “folks”. Neighbors would casually drop by and more information was freely exchanged. Back then we didn't even need e-mail to exchange information. You would sit there in tranquility in the shade of the honeysuckle bushes and talk softly until the sun began to sink in the west. Life was far more simple then; we had fewer distractions and hence better communications.

 

Of course, your results may differ.

 

Dave

---

---