Ever so often, as I stare bleary-eyed at the blinking cursor upon a blank Word document, I find myself lamenting the very foundation upon my post-modern existence is constructed:
I am haunted by the memory of writing in cursive.

I can still remember consulting the coffee-stained Rolodex on the kitchen counter.

I yearn for life before Facebook, research before Wikipedia, entertainment before YouTube.

I remember laughing before LOL, leaving before BRB, freaking out before OMG.

Just ten years later, our world is one without boundaries. Barring the advent of the Internet, just think of all the things we might have done without: online predators. Spam. Perez Hilton. Even eHarmony. Enough said.

Now before I jump on the wagon down to Shipshewana, I must admit that as a member of the Facebook generation I do enjoy privileges my parents did not. Foremost among them, of course, is the unprecedented access to information the Internet makes possible.

It is, after all, convenient to be able to resolve late-night arguments over Lewis Carroll’s real name with a quick Google search. And despite the proliferance of worthless blogs, conspiracy theories, and celebrity trash, it’s impossible to discount the value of 24/7 access to news in a democratic society.

That being said, and as a journalist, editor and English major, I cannot help but lament the lack of interest our generation exhibits in reading - be it a single newspaper or an entire novel. The fact of the matter is that our convenience-obsessed, continually-updating generation is culturally worse off with the Internet than it was without, preferring pictures to words and bullet points to sentences.

We have become complacent, lost somewhere in the “series of tubes” that, according to our current president, is “the Internets.”

When I go out of town, I rarely bring my laptop. Friends call me crazy. Before a recent trip to Washington, D.C. some asked me, “How can you stand to be so disconnected?” As though the Internet were some kind of artificial life support.

“It’s a vacation,” I usually respond. “That’s the point.”

Somehow, though, the night before my departure, I always find myself at the computer, editing my profile status: “In D.C.,” it says. “BRB.

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