My Friend Technology reply.

In reply to Wades blog "My Friend Technology" - was a little too long to put as a comment/reply..

I agree with you. It's crazy how such a small piece of technology can have such a big effect on our lives. The other day for example I got to my busstop and realised I didn't have my cellphone, from that moment I was wondering how I was going to last the day without it. Several times during the day I even went to reach for my phone to check it for messages before realising I didn't have it. I went on my lunch break and had no idea what the time was and in some strange way I felt almost secluded, like if something happened to someone I would never know and if something happened to me noone would ever know...

But we all coped without cellphones so what is it about the technology that has changed our complete mindset about communication and contactability that we now cannot live without them?

Now it is expected by people that we can be contacted at any time of the day or night, a cellphone in a way is almost also a tracker - which the American market has picked up on and actually started putting trackers into phones so parents can track their childrens whereabouts. It is almost a device that restricts our freedom as we are always able to be contacted. This is the argument my brother used as his defence against not having a cellphone (despite working for Telecom) - his work continually pushed for him to have one, even offering to supply him with a work one, but he did not want to be contacted in the weekends re. work so kept declining the offer. But did finally give in for some crazy PDA (which is probably more in line with his computer background). Could the cellphone therefore be linked to the fact that in our society people are working longer and longer hours? Because of the fact that they can be contacted any time of the day or night during their diminishing hours of leisure time?

I also believe that it's dehumanised social interaction - where one would normally ring someone or god forbid knock on someones door to talk to them they now just pick up their phone and send a heavily abbrievated text message which is given a small amount of emotion through semi colons and brackets (and P's and S's and $'s if you want to get really creative). But for some reason it is almost easier to express emotion through text messages, especially those bad ones (which usually come back to haunt you) but it's also very easy to get the complete wrong end of the stick from a text message and pick up the wrong emotion coming through. So why do we continue to express ourselves through the technology? It gives us time to react to what someone says without giving that uncomfortable silence that you would have if you took your time to think of a reply in a face to face setting, it gives us the guts to say stuff we might not normally be able to say face to face to someone, it gives us the opportunity to tell people things the minute we think of them - but are these things all benefits from the technology?

anyhows I must publish this before it is another week... :P