Modern Day Telepathy

I feel like I may have written about this before, but I can't find a post, so I'm just going to go ahead and rant, here, because I'm really, really good at that. I didn't say it would be interesting.

As a graphic designer, I have the wonderful privilege of sitting in front of my computer all day, at a desk. And then, since I freelance, I often do the same thing when I get home after work. As a side note, this is really, really bad, and it's totally going to kill me, PLUS it's not my fault that my butt is expanding.. it's the job! If you work at a desk all day, don't read this article unless you want to shift the blame of your big butt on your desk job, and in that case, feel free to print it out and keep it in your purse. It's totally not our fault, and YES you deserve some chocolate.

Thank goodness for Sir Mix-a-Lot. He understands me.

The purpose of this post is not to talk about butts, however. It's to talk about this modern day telepathy we have going on. There are days where I realize that I haven't spoken out loud to a single person for hours, yet I've carried on conversations with a gazillion people (maybe that's an exaggeration).

My coworkers may see me all quiet all day and think to themselves "hmm, she doesn't say much" (and this is also highly improbable, because my nickname is, after all "Chatty Patti" - also, no one actually calls me that, but people have referenced the doll before around me). I just sit there, iPod in, working away, and they probably think "Wow. That girl is so dull."

Little do they know, I am in the middle of an impressive monologue on the benefits of proper kerning, or perhaps I'm pitching a concept to a client... I am actually chatting away all day, but without using my vocal cords!

Do you think it could be possible that in a few generations the human species could evolve to not have vocal cords? Really, in today's society, with Live Chat, text messages and emails.. people everywhere are having millions of in-depth conversations without even opening their mouths!

That's totally weird, but also kind of cool. Remember those shy kids in school? Well, maybe now they can just text their friends instead of having to speak out loud. The new tech-savvy generation already does this, basically. I've seen them. They sit together at Starbucks without speaking - fingers flying as they text the person beside them. It's weird, it's strange, it's not incredibly efficient, but it's the way of the world (it's also a very good way to have proof of the stupid things their friends say, so then they can show the messages to their friends and judge them and laugh and it's hilarious I do this all the time Be careful what you text, people!).

It's so different for the new generations. When I was a kid, I was a HUGE note-passer. I wrote notes to my friends in class like nobody's business (sorry, mom). We would get one of the subject notebooks that you got in class, the ones with the big map on the front, and that would be a notebook between two friends. On the back page, we would write all the names for our classmates, and then come up with codes for them, like a legend. Then we would pass it back and forth and it totally looked like we were working on school work. Soooo ingenious. Then those Dear Diary things came out, and there was the toy where you could basically text message your friend, if they had one too - that was so neat (and, incidentally, when I googled it to get the actual name, I came up with "How to Write a Secret Admirer Note without Sounding like a Stalker" which is just really awesome), and then you could talk without speaking out loud, but now, with SMS and emailing in the picture, it's like sending private notes all day long - without the risk of your teacher reading it out loud!

Right now, this blog post in itself is like modern day telepathy. Kinda. I can spew my thoughts out without opening my mouth for a second. In fact, you don't know - maybe I don't even have a mouth.

Thoughts?

What's your take?