Remember when making a phone call was an event? Like, you had to plan for it because the phone was stapled to the wall and you couldn’t just dial someone up as you were driving to the supermarket… Back before talking on the phone got ambushed by in-the-palm-of-your-hand-convenience and relegated to the “to Do when I have a second because now I can do it anywhere, so why in the world would I sit down to JUST make a phone call” list?
Yeah, I dont’ know if I do either.
But you get what I’m sayin’, right? Because I feel like making a phone call has become careless and haphazard -and I’m totally guilty myself – Why do we always have to do twenty five things at once? Why can’t we just sit down and chat with a friend or family member… Why do we have to speak in shorthand via text messages when an actual human voice would be so much more thriling?
This is what technology is doing to us – it’s tricking us into thinking we are connecting when in reality we’re just skimming the social surface.
I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately because I’m way the heck over in P-town, whilst the majority of my friends are in LA or other-parts-away, and I find myself not talking to them on the phone as much as a should, but falling back on easy texts or Facebook notes… and I think I’m starving! I mean, those little electornic chirps and clicks feed the immediate “hey” like a candy bar feeds hunger – but sooner or later you lok down at your socially emaciated form and realize that you’re dying for some real human connection!
I picked up a new book the other day – I’m really getting more and more into these social awareness/non-fiction books that have at their core some kind of human study – this one is called The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, by Nicholas Carr. While it isn’t necessarily concerned with social relationships, it IS concerned with the effects of technology on our thinking processes. I can’t wait to dig in. As a person who LIVES next to her computer, this could be a delicious and terrifying read.
In the meantime, I am making a new pact with myself; I’m going to take time to talk on the phone instead of just skimming the surface of my friend pool. We’re not robots, after all, and my lightening quick texting fingers could use a break.
