Where the Tweet is my MP3 and MFD?

I’m a thirtysomething (but not for much longer) guy.  I was born after man set foot on the moon but before The Beatles broke up.  I wasn’t around when Nixon was elected but I was up and walking by the time he resigned.  I missed the Mexico Olympics but was talking by the time Munich hosted the games.

In my lifetime we have gone from mimeograph machines to photocopiers to multi-function devices (MFDs).  We have gone from computers that took up an entire floor of a building to computers that took up a whole room to devices that will fit inside your pocket and have more horsepower than those other computers combined.  We have gone from vinyl LPs to CDs to tiny MP3 players. The list of technological advances over the last (nearly) 40 years is virtually endless, it is the subject of a post all on its own.

 Yes, even in my relatively brief tilt at living on this earth there have been many changes.

I see the fruit of the technological tsunami all around me.  My younger Gen Y work colleagues don’t talk to their friends, they Facebook or Tweet them.  They don’t make handset telephone calls, they text / SMS them.  They don’t ‘get together’ for a coffee, instead they ‘hook up’ or ‘connect’.

As I sit on the 6.47 am bus going to work I sometimes pause to look up from my book and look around at my fellow travellers.  Many I see everyday, some I see infrequently and others are just ‘interlopers’ on our City Precincts Commuter Bus and I may never see them again.  In any case, of the 30 or so people who catch the bus, I would think that at least half have some sort of music device plugged into their ears and half as many again would either be texting or surfing the net on their mobile / cell phones. 

When I get to the office I will routinely have a pile of early morning emails to wade my way through before I can really get on with the business of the day.  At least half will have been written by people from within my own office, at least half again will be from people within my own team or department.  If the purpose is to pass on information or a document, go for it, more than happy to have the email but if you are sending it because you don’t feel like talking or you are covering your own behind, forget it, I don’t want to see it.

One of the benefits of the technological age that works for me is that I can see the number of the person calling me on my office phone displayed on a little LCD screen.  More than happy to take outside calls, happy even to take calls from other floors, but don’t call me if you are only sitting a half a floor away.  Get up off your seat, on your feet and meet and greet, it’s not that hard!

The question I have, and the evidence I see before me every working day, indicates that we are becoming increasingly disengaged from each other.  Why is that?  Is this social disengagement indicative of a wider societal retreat from interaction?  Why are we reluctant to talk with others? Why do we hide behind the shield of technology? 

Perhaps the disengagement is a result of a general apathy.  Maybe we are so disillusioned and weary that we quite frankly could not be bothered to interact. 

That could be it!  After all, we now have reality TV so that we don’t have to actually experience anything ourselves anymore.  If you want to go on a holiday, don’t worry someone will do it all for you and you need venture no further from your lounge room than your kitchen (but only during the station breaks) to have the full stereo high definition experience.  Want to lose weight?  Don’t sweat it’s okay, I’m sure there’s a show on one of these channels that will do it for you?  Want to get married or at least have a meaningful relationship? No worries, there’s plenty to choose from and the nation’s newest singing, cooking, dancing, performing model is waiting in the wings to strut their stuff.

I don’t really know the answer as to why we don’t really feel the need to interact like we used to.  I don’t know why neighbours don’t really talk to each other any more.  I don’t know why we feel the need to take our cues from TV psychologists.  I don’t know why the biggest selling communication devices are the same ones that mean we don’t really have to talk to each other any more.

However, I do know that there are some who are resisting the tide.  There are some who will continue to talk when others around them are up to their neck in blackberries.  There are some for whom the art of conversation and interaction is exactly that, an art. 

These people don’t belong to Generation X or Gen Y, they aren’t Baby Boomers and they aren’t of the Pre-War Generation.  They are like any one of us.  They are indistinguishable from their fellow humans in most ways except that when you are on the bus and you look around, these people won’t look away, they won’t seek refuge in their technology, no, they will do the ‘unthinkable’, they will make eye contact with you, they will nod and they might even say “hello”.  Don’t be afraid, this is conversation, you might even enjoy it, but don’t talk too loudly, it upsets the other commuters. 

 

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