“The first victim, or one of the first, was my telephone. Murder most foul. I shoved it in the kitchen Insinkerator! Stopped the disposal unit in mid-swallow. Poor thing strangled to death. After that I shot the television set!” -Mr. Albert Brock (AKA The Murderer), from Ray Bradbury’s short story The Murderer

That’s a quote from one of my all-time favorite short stories where an insane miscreant, bent on violence, wages war against all forms of technological devices – especially those pernicious noise-making appliances. Mr. Brock systematically kills, maims, and destroys everything in his “talking, singing, humming, weather-reporting, poetry-reading, novel-reciting, jingle-jangling, rockaby-crooning-when-you-go-to-bed house.” The story is equally hilarious and ridiculous, but it offers some serious food for thought about how modern innovation is affecting our quality of life.

In this age of rapid technological expansion, new digital conveniences are emerging faster than we can keep track of. So fast, in fact, that we aren’t totally capable of predicting the consequences of such a cultural shift. For example, we just don’t know if the minuscule radiation given off by cell phones will increase the risk of brain cancer long term. Studies have shown correlative results, but are inconclusive. Sure, a lot of people (in a fringe minority) are concerned about it, yet mobile phone use is still rising almost as fast as the National Debt (ok, maybe not that fast!). We’re a part of a grand experiment with life-altering consequences, and we won’t know the final results until it’s too late. But at least we’ve got apps now.

If you’d like to get an idea of how digital technology has changed our day-to-day lives, and you don’t mind risking the immediate onset of depression, please take a look at the infographic below.
Continue reading How to Kill Your Phone and Other Digital Devices Before They Kill You