“90999”

By: Militant Jones

“Come on children, you’re acting like children. Every generation thinks it’s the end of the world.” – Jeff Tweedy

What is it your folks always say about the good old days?  “When I was young, we didn’t have (insert specimen of modern technology).” “We didn’t have cell phones or the Internet, and television had only five channels.” Kids these days.

My generation has been weaned on contemporary technological advancements from the womb.  It has been our savior, and yet millions of people love to lament that it is simultaneously our downfall. We cohabit a rapidly advancing planet, a vast network of buttons and answers at mere fingertips; ironically, the more the network expands, the smaller everything becomes. Conventional wisdom alleges that this postmodern dichotomy serves more harm than good, while evangelicals wax that technological excess is a Wi-fi connection directly linked to the apocalypse.

Not to be misleading: I myself have taken part in countless Orwellian elegies in my (still) early years.  I got my first cell phone when I was sixteen. I was appalled a few years later when my parents decided to get my twelve-year old sister her own cell. I argued that I needed mine because I had just received a driver’s license, as if the two were somehow inexorable.  Looking back, what I was probably doing is searching for logical means of convincing myself that my dependency on instant connection was warranted by nature, instead of, well, sheer dependency.  It wasn’t until recently that I fully realized the positive affects that big brother could have on the most critical (and oldest) of modern networks: humanity.

The tragedy in Haiti is so grand, on a scale so vast, it has the potential to devastate an entire country forever.  Not just years, but decades, perhaps centuries, and in truth they might never fully recover. This gloomy forecast is likely not to rain true, and for one simple reason: your cell phone. Over the past week, every news outlet, every television network, and every prominent website has shown us endlessly how easy it is to help rebuild a tattered nation. By simply texting “Haiti” to 90999, you donate $10 dollars to the Red Cross Haitian Relief Fund, and the money goes directly to your cell phone bill.

Read that again. Think about it. I helped Haiti from my bed, while watching a Laker game. It sounds trite, but think about the ease with which I donated to such a worthy cause. Now try to imagine that you don’t have a cell phone.  You don’t have cable, so you can’t watch the Lakers game and see the prompt at the bottom of the screen. You don’t have the internet, and you cant see photos of the catastrophe that has befallen an innocent people (yes, Pat Robertson, I said innocent.)  I’m obviously being hyperbolic for effect, but I’m sure you know what I mean.  But ask yourself if you and your friends would have gone out of the way to donate to the Red Cross were it not made so simple. Probably not. And this is okay; 99.9% of the world is fiscally fettered, and the intuitive reaction to a donation plea is typically along the lines of “whatever I can afford to give wont make a difference. But you do have 10 bucks.

Now, it has become fashionable as a society to publicly wish that you could shut off your email account, throw your cell phone in the trash, move to a deserted island in the Pacific and never be reached.  I really don’t want to live without my iPhone. Of course of become codependent on it – have you ever played with an iPhone? It’s fucking awesome. It is hands down the most useful thing I have ever owned. I was in the middle of nowhere outside LA a few weeks ago, and was on an empty tank of gas. Pulled out my phone, opened the app “Gas buddy”, found the nearest gas station, and within minutes I was back on my way to civilization, all while streaming the latest podcast of “This American Life” directly to my phone.  This is a prefect microcosm of what has become my predominant feeling towards technology. Part novelty, part necessity.

I used to share a disdain similar to that of my sister’s cell phone towards Twitter.  The sire struck me as vain, self-indulgent, and purposeless. And while I still agree that most people use Twitter this way, I became aware of its benefits.  To wit…

In 2009, Iranian incumbent dictator Mahmoud Ahmadinejad used his fleeting power over the country’s military outfits to steal Iran’s first ever democratic election from challenger and leader of the Green party, MirHossein Mousavi (for those unfamiliar with the situation, Mousavi is Iran’s version of Barack Obama: peace, hope, change, etc.). Ahmadinejad staged a military coup on his own government, which was hours away from fairly announcing Mousavi as the new President of Iran.  Mousavi, who had been utilizing Twitter during his campaign as a means to reach out to the young citizens of Iran’s mostly under-30 capital city Tehran, caught wind of Amedinejad’s impending forces. He immediately went to Twitter and tweeted the following: “#iranelection – In case of the arrest of any of the Green movement’s leaders, take to the streets in Tehran: Enghelab to Azadi. Tell everyone.”

“Enghelab to Azadi.” Translation: Death to the Dictator.  That night, the people of Tehran shouted from their rooftops until sunrise.  Now imagine the state of Iran without Twitter. It sounds utterly ridiculous, but its also incredibly profound. And this is the presiding fact about the state of modern technology that skeptics choose to ignore. For starters, most of said skeptics are terrified of technology simply because they don’t know how to use it, and that makes them uncomfortable.

Say what you want about Grandpa’s ‘good ol’ days’.  As I recall, those were the same good ol’ days when women weren’t allowed to work and blacks weren’t allowed to vote.  It’s the task of our generation and every generation that follows to use the advantages of our ever expanding, ever shrinking world to better the whole of humanity. You could start by texting “Haiti” to 90999… if you give a tweet.

P.S. if you have not already done so, please donate to the Red Cross. Times are tough everywhere, sure. But as someone who lived through the Los Angeles earthquake of ’94, I can tell you first hand that there is nothing more terrifying than wondering if your loved ones are alive or dead. Thanks.

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