Four years ago, I was the girl on the other side of the radio. You’d turn the dial and hear my morning weather forecast, latest jokes, on-this-day-in-history trivia, and peppy songs for your drive to work or school. But the only radios I’ve heard at Biola play background music for peeing. I’d better kiss my DJ years goodbye.

Let’s face it, Biola. We live in an age when Pandora is more personal than radio personalities, Bluetooth is more necessary than Bluebook, when “<3” is more functional than the word love, when church podcasts are more in demand than church pews. Cell phones are replacing home landlines. Hard drives are replacing file cabinets. Movies are replacing conversations with friends. PowerPoint presentations are replacing oratory skills. Facebook chats are replacing face-to-face chats. Text messages are replacing mom’s voice.

Our generation is the most technologically advanced generation in the history of the world. Our babies are designed in petri dishes, our schedules are dictated on iPhones, our knowledge is documented with millions of ones and zeroes, our politics are debated through RSS feed and our leisure is found in LCD screens.

Homesteading has morphed into temporal residency because we can take a new job and drive from St Louis to Portland in a two-day trip along the Oregon Trail where women used to give birth and men used to die of dysentery. Bidding loved ones adieu to spend months on a ship and live years in an eastern land has been exchanged for 12-hour flights and weekend vacations. News has turned subjective with only specific people interested in specific stories online, instead of well-rounded people reading the paper cover to cover with their morning coffee. Farming animals for food is unacceptable to PETA, so we grow in-vitro animal-friendly meat in laboratories. Harvesting women’s eggs has become a precious commodity for extended fertility clinics and for want to be parents at $10,000 per suction.

When did we think we could stop being good people and start being good machinists? Why did we start viewing successful people as those who use technology for their best interests? Where did we get the idea that mediocre humans with equipment are better than hard workers with prowess?

Don’t get me wrong. I like technology. I just don’t like that that my avatar’s life flourishes while my own life languishes in a world of gizmos and gadgets and the great rat race.

So what does our infatuation with technology say about the state of our minds, souls and bodies? We hope to be educated and fit and religious in the least demanding ways.
If we go to class and hear professors say that a B is the most efficient grade in a class, then why should we strain for that almost elusive A? We go to Singspo for a mini-concert with fancy graphics and spotlights and amps and music that sounds like our favorite professional recording artists. We go to the fitness center and workout on exercise equipment in air conditioning, and pop an Advil afterward because it’s nicer than bygone days of drenched shirts and stinky sweat and sore muscles under the blazing sun.

But is a life of convenience really the be-all, and a life without affliction the end-all?

Maybe we should stop living vicariously through our collective machines — or at least call in on one of those ridiculously silly morning radio contests. After all, it’s nice to talk to the girl with the microphone.