With all of our advances in communication, new technology coming out every month to insure that we will never have to lose contact with a single person we have ever met, many hail the new technology as a way to stay connected. As I review my assortment of telephone, cell phone, e-mail, and internet conferencing, I am often glad for the many methods I now have to stay in touch with friends who are far away. I can send out emails to a group without having to call each member. Using the internet, I can watch my friend’s children on video while I catch up with her, even though they are currently stationed in Guam, 14 hours away. I can chat with my friend in Africa for hours at a time, and it’s free. Because of cell phones, I can actually find my friends when we decide to meet at the beach without the convoluted plans of “meet me at the Neptune statue at 11:15”. Now, I can just call when I arrive and they will stand up and wave. There are people much more technologically advanced than I, who stay connected to everything in their world 24 hours a day via blackberries and other technology. With all of these conveniences, I sometimes have to worry, what is the price we pay?
Once upon a time, your community consisted of the people who lived near you. Theirs was the only news you really cared about. If someone moved away, you might write a letter and mail it, but the news was never fresh and their response never timely. When people grated on one another’s nerves, they learned to live with it. Compromise was a necessity, because you were stuck with one another. People actually talked with one another, face to face. These days, I have a friend who calls people on her cell phone to “catch up,” while actually riding in the car with someone she hasn’t talked to in days. If someone annoys you, you block them from your email, and check caller ID to make sure it isn’t them before picking up the phone. As we spread out the people we try to care about, whose lives we are invested in, sometimes we end up feeling drained and worn out. I wonder if there isn’t a limit to how many people we can actually be emotionally invested in, and these days we spend our precious currency of caring on people we only know through technology, ignoring or shorting those we see in life.
We were discussing wealth and community in a class a few months ago, and one woman said how sad it was for groups that rejected technology (like the Amish) because they missed out on our community. For instance, they couldn’t watch T.V. together! I, for one, was taken aback by the idea that lacking the past time of sitting in front of a lit box for hours at a time and staring at the same screen might decrease their sense of community, rather than increase it. Once upon a time, you talked with friends and family. Bonding was done through communication. I read that a study was done of the phrases most often heard in the modern American family. One was “Move!” and the other “What’s on?” Is this how we get to know each other now?
Our technology has certainly rendered our lives easier. Moving away no longer means the complete break with people from “back home” that it once did. Conveniences abound. But now we must consciously focus on learning simple lessons like living with one another, and how to communicate face-to-face.
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