What’s the Buzz?
Not so many years ago I could walk into a room and tell if there was an electrical appliance on, or if the TV had been on recently. There was always that faint, barely audible, buzz that seemed to indicate that electrons were busy surging along and making things work. I’ve lost that ability now (I believe there is evidence that as we age we lose the ability to hear certain frequencies) but the other day when I was bemoaning the lack of quiet in this 24 hours a day, 7 days a week madhouse of activity, I realized that even if all the people vanished the buzz would still remain.
This nation lives attached to its cell phones, because we all know that non-ionizing radiation is probably harmless (assuming that altering protein expression in your skin is harmless), and is webbed by a network of transmission towers, cable lines and power lines the likes of which a country boy like me finds bewildering. South Korea is the most ‘wired’ nation on the planet, and it can’t be too far behind in energy consumption either. Heavens forbid that the backstreet PC Bungs and Barbershops not have their flashing neon lights going at all hours.
With all that ambient radiation bouncing around I wouldn’t be surprised if Korea is the next (or last) step in human evolution. The next generation will be born with the ability to interface directly with the communications network, or possibly with two heads, no eyes and one lung (that’s the joy of random mutation). Either way it’ll be a fun time to be alive.
Then again maybe that artificially generated non-ionizing radiation from computer screens, cell phones and power lines will balance out the lack of sunlight that seems to plague this country. God I miss the blue skies (with the lovely UV doses from that pesky hole in the ozone layer), dark nights, and moments of quiet that I took for granted at home.
You know I miss the blue skies too – and I live here. I havn’t seen genuine sunlit blue sky through anything but the occational bit of tinted glass for almost two weeks. Even my lunchtimes are sheltered trips from glass and steel fluroescent lit prison to glass and aluminium mobile cages to other glass and steel fluroescent lit prisons. On weekends I am trapped by arms till well after the sun is up and cannot make it to a nice strip of sunlight for lunch or anything because of my other half’s predisposition to be indoors and warm… *sigh*
wow, that sounded heaps more depressing than I actually meant it. Let’s just leave it at FT work and GF mean you don’t see much daylight, and while I miss it, I am still happy.