It is funny to think that 10 years ago at this time, the world was holding its collective breath in view of Y2K. Scary stuff. Computers would shut down. Bank accounts would be erased.

The technological apocalypse would lead to the sudden and untimely fall of human civilization as we knew it.

Yet, here we are, a decade later. We could be experiencing the downfall of human civilization. Who knows? But it is taking a decidedly different turn than was predicted way back when.

Techonology now permeates our society in ways we never could have fathomed as we closed out 1999.

Our post-9-11 world is littered with blogs and YouTube videos. We update Facebook statuses, send Tweets, un/friend people we probably never liked in the first place and shorten otherwise ridiculous phrases to unbearably annoying acronyms like LOL, OMG or TMI.

Just 10 years ago, e-mail was the cutting edge of internet socialization. Now our daily social lives have come to revolve so much around our high-tech toys that no one really batted an eye when word came out that Tiger Woods was sending dirty text messages to women other than his wife.

At the close of the last decade, we thought we were crazy advanced. Now, we’re making phone calls and logging onto the internet with the touch of a screen. And whether you want to calculate your tip at a restaurant, figure out how many miles you’ve driven in a particular trip or find a reasonably-priced hitman, apparently, “there’s an app for that.”

And it seems that everything worth having has an“i” attached to its name. iPhone. iPod. iTrip. iMac. IHOP. I don’t see the point.

But here we are, on the cusp of a whole new decade. Sadly enough, what has been called “the dumbest decade in history” could well be a precursor to the continued decline of standard intellect.

But again, who knows? All this technology could be a medium for making ourselves smarter, better. But all I know is that I hope over the next 10 years we learn to use these things as tools rather than letting them turn us into tools.

Jeremy D. Smith is the sports editor of the Demopolis Times