Hiding

Have you recently sent a text to someone via your mobile phone because it saved you from confrontation?

Or perhaps you've sent a quick e mail rather than confront a potentially
difficult chat?

When those options were not available did you speak on the phone rather than meet in person?

Our modern use of technology has resulted in hiding behind our communication devices. There are layers of cowardice involved in these new patterns of behavior and almost all of us are implicated.

It is also not obvious to us how much we use these electronic devices as an invisible shield behind which we can hide, or simply run our lives, until they suddenly become unavailable.

Today, for the fourth time in a week the power went out in my home. This outage has apparently affected 1,700 homes in my district and is further evidence, if any were necessary, that our first world country is doing its best to become third world as fast as it can. Suddenly nothing works and a plan B is essential.

My TV went out and I couldn’t do my exercise tape, the server went down so I couldn’t post the article that was going to feature today and the heating went off so the temperature dropped like a stone. I couldn’t microwave my porridge or turn on any lights. As I was due to meet a production client to discuss some techno questions it seemed a good idea to choose another venue or we’d be talking in the dark, literally.

But back to the key question, is this avoidance of direct, personal interaction a good development or is it a disaster?

I cannot imagine a more damaging descent into a woeful world in which you see most young mums talking on their mobiles whilst they ignore the efforts of their young children to grab their attention.

Now you see people walking along together but talking to other people on their mobiles as if the partner they are with wasn’t even present.

Yesterday it was reported that a young girl in the States used her text facility on average once every two minutes for her every waking minute. When questioned why she used this service so much she replied that she liked to talk. Ironically the one thing she was not doing was talking to anyone. In fact she was ignoring the people around her in order to communicate to those who were not. To me this is rudeness writ large and it demeans the people being ignored.

Worse still we have people being fired from their jobs by text as if they were robots with no emotions or rights to humanity or caring.

Sometimes using a communications device places increases the distance between us. If we were all to remember our humanity and opt for personal contact we would improve our connectivity and our quality of life would be enhanced as a result.