Snow, communication, technology and a step back in time.....

        While this winter we havent had that much snow, today there is snow on the ground and hasn't stopped since it started this morning. The one main thing I like about snow, is when I get to have a snow day and classes are cancelled(seriously, wouldn't you?). However no classes have been cancelled yet and while I went to my first two classes, I'm keeping my fingers crossed for my four o'clock class to be cancelled. I keep looking at my email on my Blackberry seeing if the school or the Professor have cancelled classes, and neither haven't yet. But it made me realize how much my generation relies on technology to communicate with one another. Sometimes I thing people are more comfortable communicating through a screen, then face-to-face. 
        But communicating through a screen does have its consequences. Look at what happened to the girl in Massachussetts who committed sucide because of online bullying. While some people think its fun to send hurtful messages through the computer, what they don't realize is how the other person who is recieving the message is gonna react. In the end, that reaction can effect their life emotionally and mentally because they don't know how to react to it and even worse if they commit an act such as suicide, your the one who pushed them to it. So for the rest of your life your going to be reminded that the words you typed on your keyboard took someone's life. While you weren't right there pointing a gun in their face and pulling the trigger, the words you typed were the bullets that ended their life.
          However the dilemma I'm facing is whether or not I should go to my class at 4:00. If I go to the class I'll sit there for an hour and fifteen minutes listening to a lecture, taking notes and particpating in a disscussion. While its a good thing to go to class and be a productive student in the SUNY Oneonta community, my bed is just so cozy and its so cold outside. In the end it was cancelled so I don't have to deal with that dilemma. However, what did people do before cell phones and a major snow storm happend....did they have to attend classes? How did the university notify them if classes were cancelled before we all had access to cell phones and internet? Was there a telophone chain of faculty get in touch with each individual student telling them class is cancelled or did they just watch the new and wait for a reporter to make announcement? It makes me wonder....
         The truth is technology has drastically changed over the years. In the 1950s people didn't cellphones, dvd players, and computers, people were lucky if their TV was even in color...Sometimes I wonder what the world would be like with out computers or cellphones, would the way we communicate with one another be completely different. Probably....and one day maybe technology will answer that question.