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Tuesday October 26 2004
Winnipeg Free Press
By Dallas Hansen
TEN years ago I left St. Vital, and this autumn I realized I hadn't walked the Seine River trails since October 1994.
From ages 7 to 17 my schoolmates and I delighted in roaming the network of forest paths stretching from Fermor to Bishop Grandin, building bridges and forts while espying beavers and foxes and innumerable varieties of birds -- though in the early years there was the omnipresent danger of attack by packs of Marlene Street boys carrying asphalt shingles fashioned into makeshift ninja stars.
Intoxicated with nostalgia, I planned a return. What I took for granted when it was at the end of my street was now an imperative crosstown destination. Bedecked in hiking sneakers, denim, and my favourite flannel, I jumped off the old 55 St. Anne's toward the trails. But they were gone. They hadn't been built over; the once well-worn paths, after years of disuse, were reclaimed by the forest.
Borrowing an old neighbour's machete, I began to hack away through familiar routes once beloved by BMX bicyclists, musing about what had happened, what had become different about this otherwise-unchanged neighbourhood since 1994.
Silent pact
Windows 95. Sony PlayStation. Napster. MSN Messenger. Webcam chat. Mobile phone ubiquity. Digital cable. KaZaa. Eschewing the sensuality of the real world for the technophilia of virtual reality, parents and children have formed a silent pact wherein even older boys and girls can safely respect the paranoia of our times by staying in with the autonomy to do as they please within their own minds. Surreptitious note passing at school has been replaced -- by sanctioned and encouraged e-mailing. Gone are neighbourhood games of cops and robbers; sitting solitary, today's fifth-graders prefer Grand Theft Auto 3.
Even the telephone, in my day an icon of the teenager, has yielded to the Internet's more impersonal instant messenger, the latter equipped with a host of narcissistic gimmicks such as personal icons, profile pages, and infinitely tweakable user names.
In Digitopia (Random House, 2001), psychologist Richard DeGrandpre writes, "Research has begun to show that jacking in to cyberspace is not necessarily going to help your overall social life, creating as it does... greater feelings of isolation, loneliness, and depression." This leads, furthermore, to, "a general abandonment of the social and ecological world."
High technology
DeGrandpre views the alienating effect of today's high technology as a detriment to mental and physical well-being.
Ritalin and Prozac use among children and teenagers is swelling -- as are the kids themselves. Sedentary lifestyles, along with high-fat convenience foods, bring more obesity. And with kids' increasing reliance upon instant messengers to provide an ersatz social environment, it's no wonder that, in a recent informal survey of teens in the Montreal Gazette, one 11th-grader remarked, "No one goes outside in the summer anymore."
By her account, she and her friends -- most of whom presumably live within walking distance -- can stare at a monitor typing instant messages for more than six hours daily.
A wholesale embrace of computer technology has even weakened the authenticity of adolescent counterculture. Before .mp3 downloads, you learned about underground music usually through another fan -- a friend, a schoolmate, a music store employee -- and to be a punk rocker, or a hip-hop head, etc. meant going to local gigs and being seen.
Songs
Now, however, mass downloading has spawned the rise of the bedroom scenester, whose encyclopedic knowledge of songs is unaugmented by any related social experience. No wonder the kids of the '00s -- lacking definable music and fashion movements of their own -- are stuck on the sounds and styles of the '70s, '80s, and '90s.
As with anything, moderation is key. The Internet has been a potent enabler, allowing me to read the daily headlines from, say, Manchester, U.K. in a matter of seconds, or to consult with Saab owners worldwide on how to repair my quirky car. But I would sooner live without it than dinner parties, live jazz, or the scent of autumn leaves.
Back on the east bank of the Seine I'm looking at a blue heron landing in the water, and downstream a beaver splashes his tail, working on a dam I remember was there in '85.
With a teary smile I wave hello to my old friends.
© 2004 Winnipeg Free Press. All Rights Reserved.
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