Anyone interested in taking bets on when we'll all go back to journaling with pen and paper?

That's a semi-serious question. I'm not really the betting sort.

Lately I've been really dreading the internet. Sure, everyone having a voice they can raise to the wilderness is liberating and can be illuminating, yet the immediacy and seeming intractability of the medium has made me weary of where it's all leading us.

It's not that we feel anonymous or impervious that bothers me. It's that there's no real gatekeeper other than a Darwinian survival of the fittest. If it resonates it rises, period.

I suppose in many ways all we are is a mass of cells mixed with water and electrical impulses attached to opinions. We can ask questions. We can cite study. We can judge any number of scenarios without doing either. I suppose it doesn't matter. We all think we have integrity. We all think we are on the side that is righteous.

But what will my opinion matter now or in a thousand years? Probably little.

Perhaps there's real cause for alarm, or perhaps I've just reached the point in historical progressive maturity in which I pine for the good-ol'-days of cassette tapes and Tri-X film ... of driving to work without the distraction of the potential for contstant contact. ... just as my parents wished for the return of wingtips and high-fidelity and the art of letter writing.

Most of all, I wonder what it will be like in the world when my children pine for simpler times. I just can't imagine.