iGod Can You Hear Me?

     I love technology. I have always loved technological advances. When the powers that be find a way to make something better than it was before, it gets me excited. I remember the first car stereo I ever bought. It was a Pioneer. This was about 1999. The wattage and controls was about the same as the other stereos on the market, but the technology that made me have to have it was the capability to change the display color and a completely detachable face plate. this is pretty tame by todays standards but at the time it was cutting edge. We are taught that newer is better. Every six months something newer comes along which gets the people in a uproar. But why? Why do people people have to have the newest of the new? Why are fighting, stealing and going into debt behind the newest "it" thing?

      I read a article about people lining up eight days before the release of the iPhone 5. http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2012/09/16/iphone-5-customers-in-the-big-apple-camp-out-8-days-early/.
Eight days? Who has a job that will allow you to miss eight days to stand in line for a phone? There were kids in line as well. Is this phone more important than education? How can one justify missing eight days of school for something that will be replaced in six months? Where are our priorities as a society? There were people actually wearing diapers while they waited so they could go to the bathroom just so they wouldn't lose their place in line. We are totally consumed and dependent on these advancements. I think people's need for the newest game or phone is more of a status symbol more than an actual necessity.

     A popular conscience hip hop artist named Lupe Fiasco made a song called, "WWJD he'd prollyLOL Like WTF!!!". http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tzm1l7V1uqE. In the song he talks about how people praise the newest technology like God. Technology has become their god and do whatever it takes to get it. One line of the song really put things in perspective for me. He compaired the people wearing diapers to use the bathroom on themselves so they wouldn't lose their place in line to snipers at war doing the same thing. Snipers wait for days just for that perfect shot at their target. Waiting for a new game can't possibly be of the same consequence. It cannot be that important that we as adults are willing to have a bile movement on ourselves in order to be the first to praise our iGod. We have got to get a grip on whats important in life.

-Daryl Washington