“KASHWAK = NO FO.” Those were the frightening words that glared back at me on the page of the last Stephen King novel I read. The book was titled simply Cell. Imagine a world in which cell phones were driving people crazy, literally crazy. A “pulse” spread through the waves sent through radio towers that had some kind of adverse reaction to the human psyche, so not only were people losing their minds thanks to this technology, but others couldn’t call their loved ones to warn them for fear of going “batty” themselves. The book follows the journey of a small group of refugees who, for whatever reason, had no cell phone and thus had escaped the Pulse, and one can see through their trials just how much our society has come to rely on technology.

After the people who were soon dubbed the “Phone Crazies” began their rampage, electricity was cut off due to damages in the power lines, cars were broken down and littered the already decrepit-with-dead-bodies streets, and obviously cell phones were far out of the question. It’s obvious through these hardships the characters suffer just how hard it would be for our tech-savvy world to suddenly be cut off from all technology, especially so suddenly. And that’s what makes the great Mr. King’s latest such a page-turning thriller of a horror novel: no technology. None whatsoever.

I don’t know what I’d do without my simple comforts. I rely wholeheartedly on my cell phone and laptop to connect me to the outside world, since as a college student I rarely get the chance to leave my dorm room or the classroom. I’ll never forget those panic-inducing three days when my cell phone died before I could get a new one and my Ethernet cord decided to disappear and thus disable my Internet’ I had no way of contacting anyone on “the outside.” My social life was gone, over, done. Particularly heartrending, however, was the fact that I couldn’t call my boyfriend, who lives a thousand miles and fourteen hours away. I speak for every girl in America when I say: That sucks. I suddenly understood how the characters in Cell must have felt as they traveled communication-less to Kashwak, where there was “No Fo,” or no cell phone service.

However, while Kashwak would have been a safe haven for them, it would be nothing but further torture for me. Of course, not only does my cell phone dictate my social life: where I go with whom and when, but my laptop with the super-fast Internet connection is also a must-have. And that’s not even just for social purposes. Contact with my professors stems solely from a school email account and (yes) Facebook. Yes, I admit it. My name is Alix, and I’m addicted to Facebook. (And the crowd says, “Hi, Alix.”) But on the bright side, so are my professors considering that’s how most of them keep in touch with me. Not to mention that my computer is my basic writing tool! How would I type out those oh-so-much-fun twelve-page papers for class or those editorials for the university paper or a winning essay for a writing contest without my laptop? Don’t even go there! The thought is just too frightening to bear! Even just thinking about losing my two greatest treasures makes my heart start to race, my hands start to shake, and cold sweat drip down my forehead as the little hairs on the back of my neck stand straight up.

So if you’d ever like to visit a world in which technology is suddenly stripped from a formerly tech-dependant society, just pick up Stephen King’s Cell, and see if you aren’t just as freaked out as I was! What, oh what, would we do without our cell phones, the Internet, mp3 players? Well, there go my hands shaking again!