by Pamela Rodriguez

Created on: March 15, 2008

I have renamed my youngest daughter (18) "thumbs". She doesn't seem to appreciate my, what I feel, very clever tribute to her amazing ability to text.

This causes me to often imagine what the human race is going to evolve into based on these new devices that seem to be needed by teenagers as much as breathing oxygen.

Does anyone remember the song "In the Year 2525"? By Zager and Evans? Yeah, yeah, showing my age, but if not let me help. The song was a hat tip in the direction of human evolution based on our technological advances. Here is a snipet of the lyrics:

In the year 4545
Ain't gonna need your teeth, won't need your eyes.
You won't find a thing to chew.
Nobody's gonna look at you.

In the year 5555
Your arms hanging limp at your sides.
Your legs got nothing to do.
Some machine doing that for you.

Interesting song, especially since, as technology advances, the chances of these predictions becomes frighteningly more realistic.

So what of this new cell phone generation? I watch these kids, including my daughter as they fly through the key pad of their cell phones, texting messages back and forth at the speed of light. Most of the kids I see are very rarely TALKING on the phone, but they are communicating, just in word form. So what I imagine this new technology doing to our evolution is strange to say the least.

I think that we will eventually evolve into a mammal who has VERY large and strong opposable thumbs, the fingers will remain in some smaller form just to be able to hold the cell phone and there is a chance that the cell phone will be permanently fused to the hands, it will become an additional appendage. The elbows will be permanently bent and the distance between the hands and the eyes will be well proportioned so as to be able to see the screen on the phone. Our heads will be locked into a bent over position with possibly a dowagers hump quite pronounced and will be there from birth, not developing later as age and lack of bone density take over. We will have no mouth, no need to talk anymore, the art of conversation will have been long sense lost and incidental. feeding will occur through a small hole in the side of the face so as not to impede the eyes from seeing the all important screen of the cell phone. Our legs will no longer be needed as all things can be done from the cell phone - shopping, working, living.

I see this new human now on the campus sometimes where I work, only when the cell phone human is done texting they manage to morph back into something more commenly seen as a human being.

Gotta go now, "thumbs" is texting me to meet her for dinner.

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