Disconnected Urbanism Summary

   In many examples of science fiction based lore, a common thread in some plots includes the idea that humanity creates new pieces of technology that eventually begin to rise up from their creators and conquer the world. The idea that humanity will create something that we cannot control, which will lead to our downfall, is a scary real possibility in this new age of discovery and innovation. To many, this seems like a pike dream that will never happen in our life time; but to  Paul Goldberger author of "Disconnected Urbanism" the first assult has already been initaded by the machines, and it's probably sitting right next to you.

   Yes, I'm talking about your handy, little cellphone; that piece of plastic that seems to control all the aspects of your social lifestyle. Consider this, how much time do you think is eaten up by spending it on your cell phone in one day? Now multiply that general number for the amount of days in a year; thats alot of potential time spent with family of meeting new people in your community gone right? Thats the arguement that Goldberger is trying to make us to understand; that people are simply spending too much time on their phones worrying about trivial details and "he said she said," when they should be concerned about what is happening around them. We've let the public places of the cities and subards become our own little backyard as we text or chat our way to our next destination; what ever happened to the days of random bumping into a long lost friend and catching up on old times over a cup of coffee? Now adays we simply have to "poke" them on Facebook to get an update on how their dog is sooo cute or some other meaningless information.

   Goldberger is trying to tell us that by relying so heavily on technology, we have effectively handicapped ourselves in our ability to socialize without technology as a cruch. They say that wars always begin with words, followed by action; whose to say that the next "LOL THATS SO FUNNY!!!" text will herald the end of days for humanity. It's a long and mostly improbable situation, but for good karma sake lets follow Goldberger's advice and turn the phones off people.