Did any
members of the Grateful Dead look into their crystal balls and predict that in
50 years after they formed, John Mayer would be receiving positive reviews from
Deadheads for holding down Jerry Garcia’s role in the band? Can members
of Phish’s fandom hear Conan O'Brien and Andy Richter sing "in the year
two thousand-thirty-three" and then proceed to explain that Ed Sheeran is
stepping in for the retired Trey Anastasio? Most of the time when people
think about music in the future it is not band line-ups that cross their minds,
but technology.
Recently
there have been a series of NPR reports that explore what it is like to
raise children immersed in digital media and technology. Gone are the
road-trip games of ‘Geography’ and the ‘20 Questions’. Welcome the days
in which a vast majority of kids are playing on their devices as they travel
across the interstate. Should I feel lucky that my younger
son is belting out his favorite Gavin DeGraw song while listening to his “playlist” and my older son watches movie after movie on
his personal movie player as we journey in our family roadster? I
am not complaining that these are their preferred activities instead of
mindless video games, but I am wondering if I will always be trying to guess
when will they get to a point with modern technology where there is no turning
back.
In 1996, the
band Jamiroquai were already singing of the perils of modern technology and Jay Kay nailed it when he wrote and sang, “And now that things are changing for the
worse / See, it’s a crazy world we're living in / And I just can't see that
half of us immersed in sin / Is all we have to give these / Futures made of
virtual insanity now / Always seem to, be governed by this love we have / For
useless, twisting, our new technology / Oh, now there is no sound for we all
live underground / And I'm thinking what a mess we're in / Hard to know where
to begin”.
By no means
are my sons the biggest culprits, but sometimes I wish they would stop and look
around more often. St. Vincent sings in her 2014 song, ‘Digital Witness’:
“Digital witnesses, what's the point of even sleeping? / If I can't show it, if
you can't see me / What's the point of doing anything? / This is no time for
confessing”. No need for any of the folks addicted to
technology to apologize, but at an extended family dinner when I look around at
the table, I would never have expected to see so many people glued to their
screens.
I know that
it has been a particularly cold winter in the Mid-Atlantic, but maybe it is
time to put the devices down and go outside.
Thanks for
reading.
