Hearing that 200,000 people would line up Saturday (yesterday) for the new iPad made me realize all over again what a nation of consumers we are (this is my husband's expression, and I think it's a good one). Some of us really do live to consume--the latest gadgets, the latest toys, the latest hair products. And where is that going to lead us, besides more global warming, more distance between the haves and the have-nots, more focus on the least important aspects of our lives?
It's not just that we seem to be obsessed with computer gadgets and Internet social networking sites. It's that we seem to need to trumpet our obsessions, to broadcast them and share them with our friends. "You're not on Facebook yet?" some people ask me, disbelievingly. "Are you available online tonight?" I heard someone ask an acquaintance in a cafe. The response was, "I'm always online at night." I don't think it's bad for a nation to be wired, and for all of us to have computers. I just think we're becoming, more and more, the tools of our tools; E.M. Forster's story, The Machine Stops, had it mostly right.
Where does that leave my son? What sort of planet will this be seventeen years from now, as he enters adulthood?
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