Post-Nothing
I am a connectivity addict. I’m reliant on technology to get through every day of my life—all my gadgets are synchronized, my files are accessible everywhere, and I zealously follow updates in the tech scene.
The best thing about this setup is reflected in one’s productivity going up. Everything, from searching for word synonyms to watching the latest highlights from football or basketball games, becomes more convenient, even instantaneous in some instances. What would have been considered crazy and borderline impossible in the past has become commonplace in the present, integrated very deeply in our lives.
Maybe it’s the same integration that makes problems rooted to such a shift in paradigms difficult to eliminate.
In the past, people would rely on snail mail to send messages to people far away, or find time to actually visit in order to discuss issues or just catch up on conversation. Now, we have Facebook and mobile phones, BBM and email.
In the past, one’s time was a privilege one would grant to another person, especially in terms of replying. Now, one is expected to always respond to such intrusions of personal space.
It becomes one’s fault if he or she doesn’t reply to an email, doesn’t answer calls, or fails to reply to text messages. In the long run, one would feel coerced to carry around a device to keep one’s self connected and maintain relationships in this way.
I can’t say for sure why this happens, but it could be linked to how we have grown into a culture of convenience, a society so used to the concept of “instants” that anything else would be foreign.
With SMS and calls becoming cheaper, it’s easier to display our impatience. The same applies for email and instant messaging, leaving us with no way to escape save for running out of batteries and losing chargers.
We find ourselves more intolerant to waiting, challenging the idea when we could eliminate such an event altogether.
I won’t deny that technology has its advantages, especially when applied in the correct contexts. It’s just that we, as people going through our busy lives, always try to find ways to reduce the time it takes us to perform certain processes in order to cram activities into our usually hectic schedules.
When we let such technologies run our lives, however, we find that it becomes more difficult to act like persons, to repress certain urges that will surely help us fulfill our needs but also affect our relationships.
Once the majority of people become uncomfortable with the idea of living without a phone or an internet connection, I guess that the said culture has started to manifest itself or has become the status quo.
Technology can be good, but only up to a certain point. Communication is one of its major strengths but from a personal view, also one of its biggest weaknesses. Face to face interaction still exists, and can sometimes be the best avenue to express oneself, versus hiding behind the glow of monitors or smartphones.
In the end, I guess it’s all about finding the right balance between staying connected and not letting such a modality control us.
