The World And Technology

So I have finally succumbed and joined the iTunes revolution. I am now part of the technorati that has encompassed personal musical devices. Am I the only one who worries that we are slowly becoming more and more separated? We are in our home offices on the internet, we are listening to our own music, in our own space, traveling, at work, in the car, anywhere, we can watch our own TV shows and movies anywhere we have the gadget, we can text anyone without talking to them face to face.

We now can live without so much human interaction. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? On one hand, people can't get under our skin so much as we can just shut them out, turn off the annoyance. We also don't have to rise up out of our shyness and meet people in the usual places, bars, work, shopping. We don't have to exercise our vocabulary as we only need to be able to type. We no longer have to be honest as we can type what we want people to know and not what our personal truths are. We can watch DVD's as we travel cross country.

We no longer have to look in someone’s eyes as we break up with them, we just need to text or email our dear johns, we have made ourselves not responsible for their pain...We no longer get that exquisite moment of being vulnerable with someone, as we hold our breathe and wait for them to look in our eyes and see if the ocean of possibilities float there. We no longer get to understand the human condition, test our patience and see our own personal foibles as we have made a 1 degree of separation from actually experiencing our humanity or others. We no longer get to learn tolerance as all we have to do is switch something on to switch them off. We no longer get the full experience of driving in a car and actually having to talk, learning about each other or our parents, or even actually seeing the beautiful country that we live in! We no longer have to learn how to look at a map, when all we have to do, is program the GPS to talk us to where we want to go.

I realize that with technology comes great innovations, but I do believe that we are losing one that matters the most, our humanity. Where will the quest or hunger for our curiosity come from? Where will our learning about love and acceptance be taught? Where do we teach tolerance for each other and how will we practice it when the going gets tough? How do we understand the process of falling in love if we do not have to make ourselves vulnerable and open ourselves to another? How will we understand that each night, all around the world, kids are getting tucked in, filled with hopes and wishes and dreams with current themes, and they all have one thing in common, they are all human and only technology can take that away?