When I was doing my Master’s Degree in Lisbon, I was living with one of my oldest and best friends. One afternoon, we went for a walk downtown and started talking about how our generation was one of the most technological ones and all the stages we’ve witnessed. I had a notebook with me and we made sort of an illustration showing the different advances we got to see and experience first hand. It was so much fun, so elucidative, so real. Our generation is, in the fact, the first to have an extendable on and off limb. Is that a good or a bad thing?
When I was 6 or 7 I had my first cassette tape. It was from a portuguese band – but the song was based on the 4 Non Blonde’s “What’s up” – and I was always listening to the same song, over and over. I still remember having to wait for the cassette to rewind and later on having a bunch of other cassettes do play on my portable (and awesome) walkman.
Then came the discman and the CD boom. Oh my god! What a boom. Everyone was carrying heavy weights in their backpacks with a whole bunch of CD’s so we could change along the school day. Offspring, Limp Bizkit, Eminem, Britney Spears. Then came Linkin Park, Hanson, Madonna. I still have most of these CD’s stored in my parents house.
Before the mp3, I remember my brother and some friends owning a Mini Disc. It was a smaller version of the discman with a tiny CD inside. But in Portugal it wasn’t that popular and quickly replaced with the limited space mp3. I only had 30 songs and every week was changing my playlist, downloading them, it was a whole new world for me. Now we can store all the songs we want
and there’s still space left. And we don’t call them mp3’s anymore, they’re usually iPod’s.
My first phone was an Alcatel One Touch Easy. Such a fun phone. I only used it to make calls to my father or mother to pick me up at school and then one day I got this weird sound and an envelope symbol. I only checked it 10 days later and it turns out, it was a text message from a friend asking if I wanted to go play at her house. When I discovered text messages my world got rocked. I remember thinking “I no longer have to call my friend’s house, ask if his there and wait for him to come, I can just text”! What a revolution! And then came the Nokia 3310, one of the best cell phones I’ve ever owned or existed. I loved the sound of pressing the buttons and I still do. Now, cell phones don’t even have buttons. You touch their screen.
And the sound you would hear when the internet was connecting. We were part of the mIRC, MSN, hi5, and the beginning of Facebook generation. How amazing is that? The evolution we’ve witnessed is bigger than the last 50 years combined. And these matters raise a lot of different ones. We’ve become so dependent and this things have become an extension of our bodies and minds. It annoys me a lot when I go to a restaurant, a coffee shop or a bar and I see a group of people clinging on their phones and social networks. I’m not one to talk because my work is based on a computer and online, but still, I try to spend my off time, off technological appliances. It doesn’t always work because you feel the need to be in constant contact with your friends and family – specially if you are away – but it’s a matter of disciplining yourself and the way you do things. It’s easier said than done, I realize, but not impossible.