The Evolution of Nothingness

There was a time when the abacus was the most high-tech thing ever, aside from the wheel. Yes, this is true. Would you believe people worshipped the fire?! (I watched this in Spongebob Squarepants so you don't have anything to add to that.) There also used to be a time when people predicted that we won't need computers (and he must be eating sand everyday in the present times). And Taglish April continues with this entry.

Before when children say "Laro tayo!" they would scamper and go outside to play hide-and-seek or run around like crazy, sweat profusely until they develop banil or 'yung mga matitinding libag na gumuguhit na ng kapalaran ng ibang mga tao. Then magkakaroon sila ng bungang araw tapos magpapalagay sila ng Fissan sa likod or wherever na may prickly heat shizzles sila. Today, when kids ask that question, they would turn their computers on or run to the nearest internet/computer shop, and play MMORPG or LAN games. No wonder most kids today are obese. Joke.... but half-meant... and is a serious issue today, like global warming and animal cruelty (this is serious for me).

Before, "Ang slow mo naman," ang isinasabi sa mga hindi nakage-gets ng joke or anything else. Today, "Ano ba yan, O(n^3) ang utak," OR, "Ay nako, parang Celeron processor mo ah." @_@

And it gets weirder...



Before, "Haha, uhugin! Baluga! Iyakin! May poknat!" are the words to say to make your playmate or someone else feel bad and want to kill themselves or curse their parents' genes. Today people say, "HAHA! Dial-up ang Internet! Scratch ka muna ng Internet card!" OR "Kawawa ka naman, 5kbps ang download speed!" The latter was told to me by a friend (or hindi yata friend) when my uTorrent was trying its best to piss me off.

Before people play "The Boat is Sinking" for group dynamics. Just recently, a version of this was released and performed, "The boat is sinking, the binary way". Gosh. The horror.

When you see people cry, "Oh bakit, ano nangyari sa iyo? May masakit ba? Masakit ba tiyan mo? May toothache ka noh?" but sometimes it's different, "Ano nangyari? Nagcrash na naman ba computer mo?" And your friend will reply, "Hindi kinaya ng firewall and free anti-virus ko 'yung worm na kasama sa porn ng kuya ko eh.. Huhu, wala na files ko. Pati 'yung highscores ko sa Pinball wala na. 1 gazillion pa naman score ko roon. Huhuhu."

Your parents used to share phone lines with other people, thus the domination of Party Lines. Now... what the heck are party lines. Panty lines. Whatever. Ang iniintindi rati ay kung tapos na ung ibang gumagamit ng phone, ngayon, "Oh nose, my 3G phone like got a virus. I musn't have accepted the Bluetooth image from 'hindi ako virus'. Who's that damn user baaaa?! Now I have to get a new phone. Yay!" Dang.

Trojans before are just mythological characters, now, Trojans are freaking viruses. TROJANS ARE FREAKS.

Before in networking, people ask each other for telephone numbers. Today, they ask for Multiply or Friendster accounts, and/or for their Yahoo! Messenger IDs. Honestly, I have just talked to a few blockmates over the phone, compared to high school and grade school days. I asked other people and some haven't even talked to their blockmates over the phone at all. It's mainly because you chat with them almost everyday.

You can't even talk to people nowadays, they have their earphones glued to their eardrums blasting soundwaves into their auditory nerve until these mp3 packets are divided into partitions which are sent through different channels until they find a more obscure form of output such as the lachrymal duct or the nasal area. Wha?

Textmates and chatmates are there. And I have known people who had relationships (and even ended them) through text messaging. Oh, there are those who haven't even met their text/chatmates and then they are "together".

E-books save trees from extinction, but it still feels different reading with a tangible paperback book that gets folded when you accidentally sleep on it especially when the book is sucky - but who are you to judge?

Before, people pay utility bills in person, but today, you can do it online, and get your credit card hacked. The power of technology. Makes nerds in demand.

Probably someone asked them before...
"Hi hijo, what's your hobby? Do you like playing basketball or writing poetry in the wind?"
Bill Gates: Huh? What's basketball? I program when I'm bored! It strengthens your fingers and makes your eyes bleed themselves. I also have interest in getting other people's ideas and making myself a multi-billionaire by marketing them. Lemme zap them with my viruses!! Oh yeah. Oh yeah.
Steve Jobs: Is basketball a food? I write poetry however. In binary code. Try it, it's fun. And I so totally agree with Bill. I mean, c'mon, nothing can ever compare to the bliss I get when I make an application. And the way Bill made a programming language, sooo cool. I don't need to study Foreign Language courses like other sociable people, because I can make my own language. Take that, FLC teachers!


MORAL: This evolution will never stop (unless global warming rips us off the planet sooner than later) and the end-product of this is... MORE career opportunities for IT people! Yay!! I could keep on adding the nothingness but I have to sleep and (fortunately) wake-up for tennis. Not Virtua Tennis. Only my fingers get exercise from that.