We can’t take skinny dips in the ocean because there’s no service on the beach and adventures aren’t real unless they’re on instagram…technology has doomed the spontaneity of adventure and we’re helping destroy it every time we google, check-in and hashtag…while I was growing up, answering the telephone—yes, the archaic landline—was like playing the lottery: If luck was on my side, I’d get a call from my best friend and we’d hangout for hours…alternative outcomes included grudgingly passing along a call to my sister, struggling to end a call with a telemarketer in the least rude way possible, or chatting briefly with my grandmother before passing her along to my mom. In the days before call display was the norm, you never knew who was going to be on the other end of the line…picking up the phone was, in a small way, a daily spontaneous act…technology can be a blessing, and I am thankful that we can share face-to-face calls and text messages with loved ones across the globe…But technology has also largely kyboshed the spontaneous phone calls of old. Indeed, there’s far less of a reason to even make a call in the first place, since we can stay up-to-date with most friends via their social media updates. But it’s not just phone calls: New technology has changed our experience of spontaneity in general…there’s no longer a need to see if we can stumble upon a great new restaurant since Yelp can lead us to the “best” ramen in town…..this thought made me realize how much more fun it was when phones were attached to a wire. Be spontaneous, be creative, go out and have fun, let things happen naturally.
Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash
words by Eva Davidová @evvvd
