In my lifetime the Internet has become a common luxury in every house in America, unleashing new and improved ways to gamble, network with friends and find pornography. Those with an iPhone can buy an application enabling them to sing like T-Pain when buying you a drank (now there̢۪s a conversation starter).

I can watch, in High-Definition mind you, the ‘Dogs play Wisconsin on Saturday. Those not diligent enough to learn how to play an instrument have no worries, because a game was created to simulate playing their favorite songs with a plastic guitar, drums, and microphone. I am writing this column on my MacBook while texting and listening to music.

But what hath all this technology wrought?

Instead of growing vibrant communities, everything about humans now screams seclusion, and with every technological advance that seclusion deepens. People are awkward, using silent moments as an opportunity to respond to a text message or check out their Facebook page.

No more does the picture of a crowded dinner table filled with families and neighbors fit into American life. Technology, while giving us more modes of communication than our grandparents could have ever dreamt, has instead nearly eliminated casual conversation. Clever dialogue has been replaced by 140-character comments.

All this leads to boredom. The 20th century sociologist Robert Nisbet said, “Among the forces that have shaped human behavior, boredom is one of the most insistent and universal.â€Â That it is. Everything humans do is based on their level of boredom. We’re bored, lets go see the latest crappy comedy disguised as a chick flick. Dude I’m bored I bet I could take you in Madden.

Come on, I̢۪m bored lets go out. I̢۪m so bored.

While boredom has led to some superior developments (the inventor of professional entertainment should be on a Real Men of Genius commercial) it has led to some awful, horrible ones. For what is murder but an act to resolve one̢۪s boredom? How else would one think to try drugs? Why spread untrue rumors? Boredom.

Before current technology, most people solved their boredom in industrious ways. They read, they took a walk, they sat outside underneath a big tree, they played baseball, they conversed. All of these stimulate the mind and lead to a very important benefit—thinking.

Now we turn on the tube, play video games, get on the computer, etc. These numb our minds—they negate thinking. We become mindless drones, constantly flipping the off switch to our brains. Why go outside and play sports when I can play it on a video game? Why read a book when I can just watch the movie? Why learn an instrument when Beatles Rock Band is coming out and why am I not at Target right now buying it?

None of this is to say that technology is bad. But when used incessantly, as most of us consume it presently, the result is not a good one.
“The range of cures or terminations of boredom,â€Â Mr. Nisbet went on to say, “is a wide one: migration, desertion, war, revolution, murder, calculated cruelty to others, suicide, pornography, alcohol, narcotics… the pains and the results of boredom are everywhere to be seen, and nowhere more epidemically than in Western society at the present time.â€Â
If only he could see us today.