Technology Has Become Our Humanity?

 Have you noticed how busy we all seem to be since the advent of the internet and social media, the smartphones so we can get on both? 

 

There was a time when we would go to work, then have family time and also socialize with friends.  By socialize I mean actually see them face to face, in person and communicate with our voice not our keyboard!  But now our idea of spending quality time with a friend is direct messaging, instant messaging, a text or video calling, we’ve lost that personal interaction.  We’ve created a new language with texting abbreviations but seem to have lost the ability to actually carry on a verbal conversation.

 

Don’t get me wrong I know there has been good come from the technology advances, those that aren’t able to get out because of health issues or not able to travel can still stay in touch with their loved ones but technology shouldn’t be a substitute for our humanity.  It seems that helping now is making a few clicks on an app instead of actually showing up in person, we express our “concern” now online instead of actually interacting, it’s emotionally safer for us.  Worse than that we use social media to hide, it used to be that words had consequences.  We used to be more cognizant that our words could have an emotional, negative impact on a person because we saw their facial expression or body language but now we can let go of our anger without a concern for others because it was done with a keyboard.

 

There used to be an expression that “action speaks louder than words”, but that is no longer valid, the modern saying should be “Posts are more important than actions”.  No matter what you do in life it doesn’t count and didn’t happen if you didn’t post about it on social media.  You can post about a wrong on social media and now a days that’s all you have to do; you are a social warrior!  Actually, stepping away from your keyboard and doing something doesn’t matter anymore, unless of course you record it and post it on social media.  We have come to a point that if it’s on the internet it must be true, as a society we’ve gone from my minds made up, don’t confuse me with facts to I saw it on the internet so I don’t need any facts.

 

I remember in 1999 people were told that come New Years 2000 all electronics may stop working, Y2K is what we called it.  People were concerned that if this were to happen life may get a little harder, it may take a little longer to do things manually, but we would survive.  If Y2K were to actually happen today do you think we could survive without our laptops or smartphones, could we actually perform life’s necessities?  Could we actually carry on a conversation using language instead of text abbreviations?  I doubt it.

 

Some of us used to joke that people were so mesmerized by texting that in the future detectives would not be able to conduct an interview.  In the future instead of speaking with a suspect you would have to give a suspect a device and then text back and forth.  Shortly before retiring from a police agency in 2007 I rejected an arrest affidavit because the entire narrative was written in all texting abbreviations, as the officer was rewriting that affidavit suddenly that joke wasn’t funny anymore, it had become a reality!

Will the pendulum continue moving further away or will it return to the center where technology is simply an aide and not a controlling part of our lives?  I hope so but have my doubts unless someone develops a humanity app.

 

That’s my opinion, what’s yours