I spend Sunday afternoons in the library in an attempt to get a head start on what I have to do for the week. My tasks are extremely simple—usually finish my online Spanish homework, do a few readings and write my article for the WEEKLY. Yet I find that I take hours to finish what should take literally minutes because I have a computer screen in front of me. It is possible that I am an extreme case, and maybe I could use some Adderall or something, but I think this is a common problem.

We all know that Facebook is the universal procrastination tool. I have an even harder time because for some unknown reason I choose to submit other aspects of my life to the great abyss of the Internet through equally inane sites like last.fm. This means that some aspect of my identity only exists as numbers, zeroes and ones, on some server somewhere. As this terrifies me a little, I try sometimes to minimize how much I let technology influence me.

When you are on a laptop, your body may as well not exist—the entire sphere of your mental capacities is taking place on the screen. The mouse moving on the screen is an extension of your body. Your mind is moving that mouse and your body is sitting stationary. A laptop essentially repurposes your brain in order to be operated. Think about it. That’s an extension of you and your brain on the screen. Even a laptop can wholly dominate you.

In some sense, trying to minimize how much we let technology influence us is a meaningless exercise, especially because after the Industrial Revolution, technology became a fundamental aspect of our lives and of humankind. Even the wheel was considered high technology at some point, and now we cannot imagine life without being wedded to the wheel.

It is unlikely that our technological capacities will ever stop advancing (unless we consume all resources on the planet, which is also feasible). This means that the trite side effects of technology like cell phones and Facebook will only advance in dominance and sophistication. As we stand on the precipice of huge changes in information technology, this means that we need to make sure we figure out where we end and technology begins.

I think this question is one that our generation needs to start thinking about. We are some of the first people to enter the real world who have had computers in the classroom since Kindergarten. Where has it gotten us? Personally, I feel like I have the attention span of a flea when I’m on the computer. Technology has addled my brain, and tabbed browsing has ruined my capacity to focus on anything for more than four seconds. Not only does technology addle us so that we have short-fused minds, but it also changes the way we live, intruding into things that were formally exclusive to the “reality-based” side of things.

One thing I have noticed is that we have started turning the events of our daily lives into Facebook photo shoots. We are surrendering real, actual events to the abyss of zeroes and ones. I like to save memories, as well, and value the ability to have a nice collection of photographs from fun times for future use, but on some level I wonder if we can’t just live our lives without cameras around us. The widespread nature of consumer electronics means that this probably won’t happen.

I also think we adopt new social technologies like Facebook and iPhones because they are there, not because of some overwhelming need for them. The need comes from the fact that “everyone else has one.” How else can you explain our assumption that people want to be updated on the inane minutia of our daily lives on Twitter?

If nobody had a Facebook or Twitter account, Twitterers and Facebookers would be a weird minority of geeks typing away at their phones while the real world had actual conversations (well, Twitterers currently still are—just kidding!) And as cell phones become more and more sophisticated, it means that this creepy dominance over our lives will end up in our pocket, taken with us everywhere we go. I already feel like a cyborg with an iPod and headphones.

Social technology grows with applicable and useful technology. It is inevitable that advances will occur in this realm because as practical technologies grow, fundamentally useless ones will grow as well. But is socializing something that needs to be “technologized”? Socializing is something that has remained fairly consistent over the years—all you need is a functioning brain to communicate and socialize. While these sites definitely have their place and can do amazing things, it wouldn’t hurt to remember that having a good conversation requires no battery of any sort.