Thoughts on DWT turn to evolution

To those of you who think text-messaging (e-mailing between cell phones) is the hottest thing since Liberace rhinestoned his piano, I say “Plz! Don’t make me LOL” (laugh out loud). It may be high-tech, but our experience with text-messaging suggests we have not come very far since our Stone Age ancestors painted messages to each other on the walls of the family cave.

For example, despite a million years of evolution, we still cannot walk and chew gum (or text-message) at the same time. A recent survey in Great Britain found that one in 10 Britons had suffered some kind of injury from walking into something while they “texted.” BION! (Believe it or not!) Unless Brits are a lot klutzier than the rest of us, millions of Americans are probably getting injured the same way.

Our infatuation with our cell phones suggests we are still simple creatures who can be entranced with shiny objects. Smart people who know better can be turned into numbskulls by the presence in their palms of gleaming, high-tech text toys. That’s perhaps why almost one-third of the millions of Americans who use text-messaging admit to driving while texting (DWT).

Texting while driving? OMG! (Oh, my God!) The idea of someone looking down at a small phone screen while driving is scary enough. When you consider that many driving texters are teenagers texting their girlfriends or boyfriends, it’s a nightmare. Can you imagine anything more oblivious to the world around them than a texting, driving, love-crazed teenager? (Other than my dog sleeping on her back with all four paws in the air and her tongue hanging out, of course.)

The problem has become a common cause of accidents on American roads and is so serious more than 20 states are considering laws banning DWT. Would that work? DIIK (darned if I know). What we really need is a system that wires our cars’ ignitions to our cell phones, causing the cell phones to have an electronic stroke if we try to use them while driving (mine included).

When it comes to outlawing texting while driving or other measures to protect texters from themselves, you might say TSNF! (That’s so not fair!) ICAM. (I couldn’t agree more.) Let’s allow evolution to take care of this problem, and in a million years, those who text while driving, and those for whom texting is the equivalent of walking with a bag over their heads, will have died off at a faster rate than the rest of us. Those texters with broader fields of vision and the ability to text while maintaining situational awareness will then be the predominant species. Of course, their eyes may have migrated to the sides of their heads so they look like walking wall-eyes, but that seems a small price to pay.

This evolutionary approach would also end the recent padding of lampposts on Brick Lane in London because so many people walk into them while texting. (The street was apparently named for an object with an IQ comparable to that of people texting on Brick Lane while walking.)

Texting reminds us how much the evolution of human culture has depended on advances in communication. Without the alphabet, written language and the printing press, human knowledge would expand much more slowly, science would still be in the Dark Ages, and instant messaging might still be a smack on the head with a club. The telegraph, then telephone and then the Internet have allowed us to spread 6 billion people over the entire planet but still live in a global village.

No matter how technical we get, however, the text-messaging craze speaks to the fact that we remain simple creatures with simple needs, among the most basic of which is staying in touch with those who enrich our personal lives. We may have developed countless ways to live apart, entertain ourselves, and stay inside our own little worlds, but our billions of daily phone calls, e-mails and text messages to each other suggest that what we really crave is the warm touch of another’s interest in how we are and what we think. To which I say, XLNT! Those cave dudes would have approved.

Erik Steele, D.O., a physician in Bangor, is chief medical officer of Eastern Maine Healthcare Systems and is on the staff of several hospital emergency rooms in the region.