“A Public Service Video for the Techno Generation”
**
Every person boarding the morning commuter bus has his or her earplugs firmly affixed, eyes intently focused on the iDevice in their hands.
Arriving at their financial employer, attention immediately shifts to the multiple multi-colored computer screens surrounding the cavernous room in which millions, perhaps billions, of dollars will be invested, transferred, and/or received with a single computer click, and nary a spoken word is necessary.
At other company offices, it may be information and not necessarily money which flies from one computer to another, each sender quietly ensconced in their constricted corporate cubicle.
Some of the above commuters are students. When in class, their professor silently puts his power point presentation up on the whiteboard. Without discussion, notes are taken by the students, in preparation for the on-line quiz which will follow the last slide.
In each of these cases, lunch is ordered by simply punching some buttons on the iDevice that everyone has at their disposal. To be without such a device is to be ostracized, to be like the fish on the dock, flopping wildly in a world which is no longer home.
For each of the commuters, the day passes wordlessly.
On returning home, he or she checks his or her home tablet, which has programmed the meal now circling in the microwave. A significant other is on their own tablet, while the child born of sudden, soundless sex is mesmerized by the cartoon on his Disney iDevice. When the child has a question, his parents press buttons on their iDevices and their thoughts are projected onto the nearest whiteboard-sized wall. The dog of the house slowly circles the living room, bewildered by his inability to make sense out of the headphones placed on his ears.
A series of pings indicates the various times when each member of the family is expected to wash, brush, and prepare for bed. A good night message automatically appears on the iDevice permanently attached to the night table in every bedroom.
**
As the credits roll at the end, the complete silence is broken: “thank you for watching.”