Monday, January 17, 2005

The End of Silence?

My e-mail is down and I have no idea why or how to get it working again. I suspect, but can’t be sure, that there is something wrong with my password, although up until this morning everything worked just fine. No choice now but to call the good people of Cox Communications, sit on hold for half an hour before being connected to some twenty-year-old whiz who will walk me through the problem, and point out what I did wrong.

This is the age of passwords and log-ons, e-mail and voice mail, digital life. I heard a radio spot for a car audio store the other day that promised to turn my vehicle into a rolling cinemaplex, with DVD players for my kids and an iPod hook-up for me. Presumably, we could then travel in peace, each of us lost in our own digitalized universe. As a parent of two young children who live to taunt one another, the thought of turning the family car into a rolling entertainment complex is appealing. It’s damn hard to referee a pitched battle from the front seat.

Portable distractions. Cell phones loaded with games. Handheld computers loaded with information. With an iPod we can take our favorite music everywhere and arrange hundreds of songs in a way that suits us. We are never without external stimuli. I wonder about this. Sages have always preached that wisdom is discovered in silence. While all these devices have a place and function, I wonder if we are losing the ability to tune in to our inner soundtrack, our quiet voice.

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