Crackberry, the addiction!

My friend is physically rather imposing. Let us just say he doesn’t get lost in any room. He is very outdoorsy, active, intelligent, by my standards, and inquisitive. All that is in the process of going to waste, turning to mush, failing to materialize, etc., etc. It is a pitiful thing to watch: the deterioration of a competent mature adult with a wealth of useful experience into the hunched and immobilized victim of addiction, of what even he calls “Crackberry”. The scourge running rampant among even the healthiest among us could also be referred to as I-phonitis. It’s not just for kids anymore! The sad joke of children lost gaming in tech world is now a generation-jumping epidemic affecting vulnerable individuals well beyond any notion of youth, those who perhaps only just last month learned how to cut & paste . Now they interview global information piloting their own palms, scraping the cerebellum for reasons to stay attached. Consider the patient on an IV drip who balks at the imminent threat of pending release from hospital, like a canary panicky in the face of freedom through the open cage door, clutching the wheeled drip stand for fear of wellness and fresh air. This is the new pathetic face of umbillicalization to the global info placenta. What used to be communications opportunity is now Bubble Boy with WiFi.

My good friend has lost one to two inches in height. His gaze can hardly elevate above the horizontal. Maybe a Gyrfalcon streaking above the treeline could do it, but it would rock him back on his heels, his neck having lost most flexibility, atrophied by the unceasing down-slanted stare. He is most comfortable with a focal length out about fifteen inches. When he stands directly in front of you, you no longer really exist in his world. You are too far away, outside the attention limit, beyond the frame of his world, the impersonal and cynical world of Crackberry. And it is not only communicable, but highly contagious. Sit in any waiting room and look about you. Emergency patients no longer wail for Nurse, doctor! Soldiers don’t scream Medic! Old folks who have fallen and can’t get up no longer press the panic button for remote rescue teams. All anybody wants is Dr. I-phone or Nurse Blackberry. That’s the fix, baby. Life is good as long as the battery is.

For the addict, of course, the comforting rush of endless and constant connectivity has replaced any priority for interpersonal give and take in the flesh. Hand gestures, facial expression and eye contact have given way to frantic thumbing of the device, fingertip filing to work the tiny keys and out-of-sync exclamations of surprise, urgency or, more often, exasperation with the vagaries of not enough bars.

Of course, that’s not my only observation about the great time I had just recently downeast in Maine. Once you start noticing that practically everyone everywhere is immersed in their personal digital assistant, assuming you can spare a second or two to look up from your own, you will find it’s a majority that you are observing. At least no-one will see you staring at them!

Well, that techno-rant notwithstanding (always a curious and especially-appropriate-here word in its own right), below are some random photos from that recent trip to and off the coast of Maine, out of Rockport, past a zillion gorgeous islands to Matinicus, then out to circle Matinicus Rock, then back with a couple of stops along the way:

George - surfer, host, entrepreneur, business maven and, alas, fisherfolk.