In the mid-1970s, a college classmate wrote a novel set in the near future in which everyone suffered from what he dubbed information sickness. Burdened with too many choices and too much data, they would slip into paralytic depression. His book came to mind as I considered the fate of three teen sisters in India who jumped to their deaths from a ninth-floor apartment, suffocated by an addiction to video games. They had all but stopped attending school. Stories such as these are no longer rare as dependence on AI, games, smartphones, and social media deepens. Tech giants are fully aware of this slavery but prefer to steer clear because to warn of it might undermine profits. All know full well that if the web crashed, human identity would be compromised. Even the American president often forgoes speaking in favor of the scrolling language of posts. To me, this is information sickness become reality. Faced with a new world I can neither fathom nor understand, I choose instead to savor memories of boyhood in Washington, D.C., in which I would often secretly climb to the roof of my home and behold the world around me. I was Kid Charlemagne, and all I needed was my imagination and perhaps a "Road Runner" cartoon or two.
Those days are gone forever, alas, and any souls poised on rooftops today may be there for an entirely different reason.