Fear? Pride? Humility? Anxiety? Laziness? Why is it that some of the most intense messages given to me have been conveyed behind script? How is it that some of the most emotionally advanced people I know are allowing the demise intimacy to be conducted through their fingers?
THUMBNATION!
Don't get me wrong, I see the simplicity however I do not think it is in the bste interest of the human condition of insecurities and avoidance to ever text, type or write something out of anger that we would not be willing to say for all the world to hear.
Is this artificial friendship that we are making via false communication going to some day override the old fashioned need for intimacy? Are we going to lose touch so badly that we forget how to?
"It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has far surpassed our humanity"Albert Einstein
Niki:
ReplyDeleteI really like the insight and depth of this blog post. However, I do not see this as a current technology problem.
Your right that social anxiety definitely now finds solace in the ability to lash out via a text or an email . You hit the nail on the head. Its fear, anxiety, pride, humility, laziness, the inability to really talk to someone face to face and a million more emotional cripplers.
But this is not a thumbnation issue.
Im sure the first person in the 1800's that got the “break-up” western union telegram thought that technology had just ruined their life.
And how long did it take Alexander Gram Bell before that angry drunken call to Cuzzin Bob to tell him what a real asshole he was. Most people say things on the phone to loved ones that they would never say sitting across from them in a restaurant.
Even as recently as the 50's-80's when it became popular for some women would use a “Dear John Letter” to express their true feeling's when they wanted to leave a spouse and couldn't tell them face to face. Instead write a long dramatic letter that the other person you love or loved has no ability to respond to... Now thats a lack of intimacy.
Now I know its hard to think of a pen and paper as technology, but it really is. And people for 100's of years used just that technology to express love, anger, amusement and a host of other things in letters that they couldn't or wouldn't face to face. And for every Dear John, there is a precious love letter that special someone keeps in their night stand that brings back wonderful memories.
True intimacy grows slowly in relationships and most will never have the intestinal fortitude achieve it. But that... not the technology we have use of stands in our way.
So I don't think that it matter's if the current technology is a quill and parchment or a Crackberry, people use shields to communicate when they should be talking face to face.
True it happens much faster today then in the days of the pony express but the immediacy also allows you the see the error of your ways and mend your mistake more quickly.
Like all technology its in the eyes of the beholder or maybe in this case its in the thumbs.
:)