Month: February 2012

I checked out a book recently that caught my eye.  I’ve purposely not started reading it yet because I wanted to write about the subject matter prior to reading the research and conclusions the author makes.  The public library is getting slightly richer from my lax attention to deadlines so now might be a good time to start writing so that I may in turn start reading…

From what I gather, the book, Alone Together, discusses the ways that technology allows us to be “connected” to the world while simultaneously isolating us.  This is a trend I’ve noticed for years.  I increasingly feel as if I compete with twitter’s constant 140 character limit messages to have a conversation.  Can I condense all of the details of what I’m trying to convey to 140 characters?  In a conversation where character count should be irrelevant.  With an actual adult human being whose attention span has regressed to 30 seconds while looking for the 140 character cutoff?  Most times, I feel as if the answer is no. 

Because I don’t live where I grew up or in a city where I feel necessarily understood, the phone used to be my lifeline.  Yet, as time goes by, even the phone has become another vehicle for technological limitations as phone conversations shift to text messages.  Let it be known here and now, I hate text messages.  For simple yes/no questions, text messaging is fine.  A conversation?  Not so much.  I used to enjoy the holidays because that was my designated time to call everyone far and wide to wish them a happy holiday and catch up.  Now, I have people wanting to send me a “Merry Christmas” text message.  I’ve had people refer me to Facebook regarding some planned get together.  When I’ve told them I don’t have a Facebook account, they seemed at a loss as to how to give me details about the whens and wheres.  To me, it seemed that they could just tell me or email me but my not having a Facebook account just disturbed the unnatural order of things to the point of utter communication breakdown. 

I miss unmediated human interaction the most.  I feel like a flesh and blood, emotional hold-out in a digital, online age.  There is a man I run into from time to time who discusses The Singularity.  I can’t break that concept down in 140 characters or more and won’t try.  However, he mentions an age when there won’t be new flesh and blood resource-consuming humans created but uploaded artificial intelligence personalities and personas.  There is a large following devoted to ideas such as those but I rather enjoy the good moments of my flesh and blood existence.  I wish I had more substantive flesh and blood, emotional encounters with others who were engaged in that moment with me instead of heads bent in a prayerful benediction to small, digital screens.

Ultimately, I wish the title of this post were “Emotionally connected while technologically tuned out”.  With my prayerful benediction almost over, I will now go out and experience the flesh and blood, emotional world around me…