Technology/Progress vs. Nostalgia/Humanity

Growing older means new journeys and experiences, but it also means seeing some beloved aspects of childhood fade out of existence.

I talked to the owner of Movie Scene this week about the imminent closing of her Milford store, a place I had gone to all throughout my younger years.

This puts me in a difficult place mentally. On the one hand, I am a big proponent of progress and new technology making our lives faster and better; and on the other, I am concerned that one day we will forget what it is like to be human.

A young Robbie would eagerly await coming home from school once a week to see what his mom picked up on Movie Scene’s “Two For Tuesday” special. A modern day Robert fires up Netflix on his iPhone each day and spends 10 minutes just figuring out what he wants to watch.

Both of us are having a great experience. My younger self is experiencing the excitement of waiting for something he can’t get all the time, and now I have the entire world of media at my fingertips.

The same story can be told for everything I enjoyed in my childhood. Was it more special to finally get my hands on that one cassette tape with my favorite song, or listening to an impossibly large library of music on iTunes? Can waiting for my friends to log onto AIM even compare to the multitude of ways we can converse nowadays?

Writing about Movie Scene got me thinking about the effects of progress, but not just on nostalgia. Our economy is driven to work harder, better, faster (and stronger) year after year. Yet, what will happen to us once we close in this ideal national landscape?

Even now we have technology and products that mimic the joys of actual life, but are obviously not the real deal. We can buy candles that smell like a roaring campfire, but there is nobody around the fire pit. We watch people on television live their lives in “reality” while the world outside sits lonely. I can talk to my friends all day without ever actually SAYING anything.

Restaurants now have machines that can pretty much make a Happy Meal by themselves with no experience necessary from the user. We are replacing the joy of skilled work with button-pushers and order-takers.

The nerd in me lusts for the future, while the kid inside reminisces about the good ol’ days.

I want the world to progress and am beyond excited to see what new technology will further amaze my simple human brain. Still, it is hard not to be worried about a culture that gets everything it wants with little effort. 

Maybe there is some room for a little inefficiency in our society, because there are some joys in life that a faster, more efficient experience cannot replace.

I think we just need to decide what those are before they disappear forever. Growing up means leaving some things behind, but the inner child, one who holds certain things close to their heart, should never be abandoned.