Matt is... going 24 hours without his cell phone. Please write a letter if you need to contact him.

I awoke to my phone vibrating with the influx of texts and emails it usually gets in the morning. Shit! I had forgotten about my phone automatically turning on at 9:15 in the morning. I resisted the terribly strong urge to look and held down the red power button. It would be a long day.

Thursday morning was one I rather would not have gotten up for. Sleep deprived, slightly hung over, and feeling the beginnings of a cold, I twisted my body to the side and grabbed the half empty handle of Seagram’s Seven from under my bed. I might need this today. I put it back and slept off and on until about 12 when I forced myself to get up. I had made plans to pick up my girlfriend exactly at 2 when we would spend the day enjoying the beautiful outdoors. Today was cloudy, rainy, and dull though. It was more of a sit around and watch TV day. Yes, it would be a long day.

After showering and grabbing a quick bite, I hopped in my truck and didn’t enjoy any music on my 45 minute ride to my girlfriend’s house. I don’t remember the last time I had done such a thing. It just seemed natural to have some music playing.

This was only the second time I had been to her father’s house but I felt I had a good enough idea of how to get there that I’d be able to make it without using the Google Maps application I so conveniently have on my phone. Fortunately, my one wrong turn allowed me to arrive exactly at 2 instead of about 5 minutes earlier. I got out of my car and knocked on her door. Weird.

After hiking for about a minute and a half on a trail in Patapsco Valley State Park, we decided it was a bad day for hiking and turned around to go to my car. We drove to the city. We drove to Towson. We ate. We pondered what to do next. I really wanted to call someone. However, I found myself rather entertained for about an hour when we went to my favorite thrift store, Value Village.

I would have happily spent a longer time there had my girlfriend not been showing boredom, but it was time to do something else. We drove more. We drove to Michael’s. Not some guy named Michael, but that arts and crafts store. I’m tempted to leave this part out for the reader’s sake. I will. It was terribly unexciting, so we decided to return to nature.

There is a place I regularly go in the summer with my friends that we refer to as the Cliffs. It is located somewhere in the Loch Raven Reservoir and requires a little hike past a police shooting range, but is completely worth it. It isn’t technically legal, so the trail is often covered up, but I knew I’d be able to find my way. I was wrong about that, but there were over seven hours left without cell phones and TV, so we continued to hike in random directions, determined to find our way. About twenty minutes later, we saw water. It was beautiful.

Within ten minutes we arrived at the cliffs and took in the view. The sun set below the trees and I grabbed my whiskey to celebrate how far I had made it. We ate peach pie. Peach pie and whiskey. As the last light was fading, we took off. Surprisingly, it was much easier to find the way to my car with no light.

We arrived at my house around 9 something and played Scrabble. My girlfriend, used to playing Scrabble on Facebook, demanded she be able to use the dictionary to aid her. I felt this was cheating, but allowed it anyway. The night grew later as my score nearly tripled hers. It always feels good to win, but I was tired of Scrabble and hiking and lameness.

The clock struck 12. Oh wondrous technology! I turned on the TV and it soothed my jangled nerves. I didn’t even watch it but it was wonderful.

I blasted music as I drove 80 mph down 695 at 2 in the morning to her house. I got a cigar on the way back and listened to London Calling in its entirety. I was just glad it was over.

Looking back on the whole day, it really wasn’t so bad. The one thing I missed the most was music. I severely missed my cell phone, but it allowed me to spend a whole day uninterrupted with my girlfriend.

The Way of the Hybrid

Watching the Penn and Teller video in which random people were convinced, without lying, to sign a petition banning water, assured me that the majority of people today are incapable of processing complex thought when spoken to. Imagery rules in today’s society. Most people do not visualize problems as well when heard as opposed to when they are read or viewed. Don’t get me wrong, I do not think that written communication is actually superior to spoken communication. I find it ridiculous to claim that one is better than the other. Different situations always allow one to be more effective than the other. We often hear what we want to hear and take in little of what we don’t already comprehend. This creates a situation where peoples’ insecurities force them to be easily influenced. Oftentimes, this is exactly the goal of the speaker: to influence a person or group of people and persuade them to do something. If comprehension is the goal, I feel that written communication is the more effective method. In this era of fast information however, it is the merging of oration with visual aides that reigns superior.

In the Penn and Teller video, a woman walks around a rally where people are gathered to raise awareness of environmental issues. One by one, she asks people to sign a petition banning “dihydrogen monoxide,” a substance that can be found in food, pesticides, etc. and one by one, the people sign it. It is rather hilarious to watch, but could you honestly say you wouldn’t do the same thing?

The situation is a trick. It forces people to act without thinking. Our natural reaction is to sign the petition because we want to please those we think of as like-minded people. The question is: would such a petition receive a similar response if it were, say, hosted on a website devoted to improving the environment? Without actually testing it, it is impossible to know.

Documentaries have increased in popularity as people have lost interest in non-fiction literature. This is in part due to the fact that most people want the most relevant information in as quick a way as possible. Reading has essentially become work to the majority of people instead of entertainment. As we live in an era where information is always at our fingertips, it is not surprising that we shove away anything less convenient to us.

I see documentaries as an effective way of communication. We are compelled to watch them because it is convenient, and the combination of visuals with guiding narration makes them easy to follow.

We learn a surprising amount when we want to. The same way we get addicted to a TV show or a good book, we can also get addicted to a subject we’re passionate about. Once we have developed that passion, spending time learning about it becomes enjoyable and easy. I can only assume that earlier generations read more because it was the primary method of communication.

Written communication is still prevalent in today’s society. It is just changing dramatically in the wake of cell phone texting and blogs. These new forms of communication have turned what many considered a fine art into something much simpler. Popular journalism is transforming from delivering facts to sharing opinions. More specifically, people are choosing what to read based on the contingent they most closely identify with. Recent articles in the Washington Post give conflicting views as to the effect this is having on us. One, The End of Literacy? Don’t Stop Reading, by Howard Gardner, suggests that presentation of knowledge always changes, pessimists of this change will always exist, and we must accept the change as evolution of society.

A master of written Greek, Plato feared that written language would undermine human memory capacities (much in the same way that we now worry about similar side effects of "Googling"). But libraries made the world's knowledge available to anyone who could read. The 15th-century printing press disturbed those who wanted to protect and interpret the word of God, but the availability of Bibles in the vernacular allowed laypeople to take control of their spiritual lives and, if historians are correct, encouraged entrepreneurship in commerce and innovation in science. (Gardner)

Another article, The Dumbing of America, by Susan Jacoby, suggests the regression of society due to the decline in reading of books and proper literature. Raised by a writer and founding editor of her own literary magazine, I can’t help but at least see Jacoby’s point. I regularly edit papers that my friends write and spend surprising amounts of time fixing simple spelling and grammatical errors. We all make mistakes, but I feel it is somewhat pathetic given my friends are all college students and writing is an important aspect of success in the real world. Jacoby points to video as the main reason for the dumbing of our society.

Dumbness, to paraphrase the late senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, has been steadily defined downward for several decades, by a combination of heretofore irresistible forces. These include the triumph of video culture over print culture (and by video, I mean every form of digital media, as well as older electronic ones); a disjunction between Americans' rising level of formal education and their shaky grasp of basic geography, science and history; and the fusion of anti-rationalism with anti-intellectualism.

First and foremost among the vectors of the new anti-intellectualism is video. The decline of book, newspaper and magazine reading is by now an old story. The drop-off is most pronounced among the young, but it continues to accelerate and afflict Americans of all ages and education levels. (Jacoby)

I hesitate to classify video simply as spoken communication for the simple reason that video incorporates visual aides as well. In today’s society, websites such as Youtube have become a hub for information sharing in the form of video. Video allows explanation that could never be done by simply talking or writing about something. Just this past summer, I took up an interest in playing the drums. Instructional videos on Youtube helped me quickly learn techniques and exercises that could have only been explained easier with the help of an actual instructor.

It is the merging of various types of communication which reign superior in today’s society. Written communication remains an effective way to share information with a literate audience, spoken communication dominates in the world of persuasion, but visuals improve comprehension no matter the level of intelligence of an audience.