Ever since its birth in 1776, America has had a tendency to misuse its resources. Our political resources, our constitutional amendments, have been misused so that the "right to bear arms" enables college students to easily obtain guns to shoot one another. Our country's fundamental resource of democracy has been misused in that we impose it on whatever country we please. Even our natural resources have been misused, leading to pollution and extinction. Americans tend to do whatever they want to whatever extreme they see fit.
One of the areas in which this 'antsiness' is most evident is our use and development of technology. Like any first world country, every aspect of America is fueled by cutting-edge technology, and we, as Americans and consumers, eat up every megabyte of it. While some may call the infusion of technology into every facet of life "progress," I have to disagree. Technology is another one of those things that we as a society have begun to misuse as we find the country facing all sorts of impending doom in our current state. Technology has become a catalyst in our downfall that has led us to become the laziest nation.
In the past few decades, the marriage of technology and American mentality has produced such gems as drive-thru restaurants, dry-cleaners, Starbucks and funeral homes, moving sidewalks in the airport, the Segway, buttons that open your garage from your car, lawn mowers you get to sit on and opportunities to do all your banking and grocery shopping online -- God forbid you leave your couch. It's as if we are fooling ourselves: Much of our everyday technology that is hailed as innovative is really just a method to make our lazy lives go a little bit faster. It's as if our society is simultaneously speeding up and slowing down as we over-program our lives with technology to make our nation's sloth a little faster and shinier.
One of the more tragic consequences of Americans' unwillingness to take the time to actually do anything thoroughly is the application of this mentality to knowledge. Our attention span as a nation has shriveled drastically, and where 'knowing the whole story' on any of the pressing matters in the world is concerned, attention to detail has become obsolete.
Most Americans get their news every day in the form of headlines on the internet, as you can now find almost any publication online and even updated hourly. We are able to pick and choose what we feel like we need or want to know, which usually consists of the trite and the entertainment-oriented. I'm just as big of an offender as anyone -- yesterday I signed onto The New York Times web site and, after a quick scan, chose only to read about the discovery of why the Titanic really sunk. This apathy seems to stem mostly from the fact that the bombardment of technology makes us more self-absorbed -- we choose what parts of reality we wish to acknowledge.
As journalism makes an effort to rework its approach to cater to laziness, so too do public figures. I have often been bothered during presidential campaigns and debates that the candidates seem only to throw out big ideas or promises without real plans or details behind them. Now I realize that's the only way to get through to the American people -- quickly and succinctly. Who wants to be bothered with the long-winded details of how exactly we are going to get ourselves out of our economic mess or pull the troops out of Iraq? Just tell us in one line by what date you'll fix the country for us so we don't have to worry about it anymore. Case in point: our current president, George Bush. A former journalist for Time Inc. once told me that George Bush was elected on "sound bytes alone," and it is easy to see how. All he needed was a few punch lines about patriotism and family values, and eight years later we are paying the price.
Why do we feel that we can avoid the news, or rapidly feed ourselves highly abridged versions and consider it 'being informed'? Are we too lazy to read the whole story because we're arrogant and distracted? Or because we feel that we are immune to the problems facing us in our own country when we're hiding behind our fortresses of technology?
I have a feeling that Americans are not going to get any less lazy. Instead, technology will continue to help us adapt until the day we can live entirely immobile lives.
