Want, Order, Have

Now Playing: Steve Miller Band - Fly Like An Eagle

I was watching Demons the other day - the show is nothing special, except as a showcase for Philip Glenister's inexplicable "American accent" and if I were him, I wouldn't draw attention to it - when a character was told to read Bram Stoker's Dracula and asked, "Can I watch the movie instead?"

We - Generation Y for Youtube - take it for granted that a given text has been adapted for either the big or the small screen and further assumes that these adaptations are readily accessible, whether through Blockbuster, Netflix, or any of the plethora of legal and illegal download options. Caveat Lector: the faithfulness of the adaptation is never guaranteed. In fact, it cheers my cold, cynical heart to think of some hapless high school student writing about Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale's happy ending and promptly getting an F for his or her troubles.

In fact, we're not just the Youtube generation, we're the on-demand generation. I remember being lectured by a TA, "You guys have it so easy! When we had to look papers up, we had to actually go down to the library and look up references on index cards! All you guys have to do is sign on to Pubmed, work some key-word magic, and BAM!" (By this point, I realized that an extension on that assignment was highly unlikely.)

The cliche is coming true: the internet can bring most of the world to your finger tips if (a) you have a credit card or paypal account and live somewhere covered by major retail websites' shipping policies, or (b) you have good bandwidth and flexible ethics. The flipside of this is that "getting it done online" has gone from being one option among many to the only choice. If some horrible, Jericho-esque apocalyptic scenario does occur, the sound of clicking Ctrl + Z en masse will fill the land, fading out slowly as people die of radiation poisoning.

Or how about that other classic of apocalyptic fiction - the zombie epidemic?

"We're out of ammo and the zombies are getting through!"
"Don't worry, I ordered us fresh supplies from Amazon. One Day Rush!"
"There is no more Amazon, f***er!"

And then the crazy, right-wing, right-to-bear-arms, guns-and-ammo-stockpiling nutjobs will inherit the earth.