The Tech Curse
Long ago, when dinosaurs roamed the Earth and I was in middle school, I crushed on a boy. Oh, seriously, I crushed on a boy. I drew hearts on my notebook, I swooned when he walked by drenched in some horrible cologne, I had it bad. I’d rush home after school every single day fully convinced that it would that afternoon that he’d call. It would that day he’d realize that I was the most awesome girl and call.
The phone would not ring. I told myself at the time that I’d just missed his call or that the phone had been busy when he called. My parents, being at the time the most horrible parents in the world (solely because they took breath and I was in middle school) did not have call waiting nor an answering machine.
By the time I was in high school, I had my own phone line with an answering machine. The boy (surely a different boy by now) still didn’t call; but I told myself that he merely had not left a message on my machine. The thought that he had no idea who I was or was not remotely interested in me never would have crossed my mind — well, until it did cross my mind and I melted into puddles of tears and teen angst drama.
By the time I was out of college, the invention of caller id was new and on the market. I had to have it — even then a budding tech addict. Surely now, I’d see that all the men who I was sure were interested in me were calling and not leaving messages.
Somewhere in my early 20’s, I had the life altering realization — the boys were NOT calling. It wasn’t that they did call and I missed them, it was that they just weren’t calling. It was then (and for a few years after that) that I wanted to shun all technology. You see, it was the invention of the answering machine that allowed us to know someone wanted us to call them back. It was the invention of Caller-ID that let us know that they had called in the first place. It was those same inventions that allowed you to know that someone didn’t want you to call them back or that they hadn’t called at all. It stopped allowing you to create ego soothing excuses for the lack of a date on a Saturday Night.
In those same years, cell phones were growing from bricks in bags (I totally dated a boy who had a phone in a bag off his shoulder — I wish I was kidding — but I’m not) to things so small I now regularly put it in my back pocket. Then we discovered that we could forward our home phones to our cell phones or get rid of home phones entirely.
In short, technology has allowed us to be overly accessible. And I’m not just talking about cell phones here. How many of us Tweet, Facebook, blog, or otherwise share publicly facets of our lives? We create our own spotlights these days and yet there has been no greater desire for privacy.
I’ve got to tell you that I think the Queen Mum thinks I’m nuts when I wonder aloud why do I have to get so much e-mail or why do I feel like Grand Central Station’s switchboard some days. In her smile (and frankly, she’s probably laughing at me), she is thinking, “Girl, if you weren’t so out there, people would leave you alone.” And I’m thinking, “Did you see my Myers-Briggs score lately?” I digress.
I think about this often really. Duke will grow up in a world where people seem to talk less and communicate every little detail of their life. (I have a friend whose son is nearly driving age and since he is my friend of Facebook, I know when this kid eats, sleeps, has insomnia, and when his dad takes him shopping for shorts. I’ve never known so much about a teenaged boy — even when I was a teenaged girl.) Duke will also grow up in a world where everyone is instantly accessible. When once it was totally ok to wait 3 days to get a call back, an hour seems too long.
As a self-confessed tech-geek, I love the things we can do now that years ago was myth. When I sat by my princess phone — it had no Disney Princesses on it. My phone had a rotary dial and could break toes if dropped, I could not have ever imagined the ability to know so much about a person — and yet so little.
But you know the truth — the truth is, I think we know less than we ever knew before. Because e-mail and texting is easy, we don’t share the things we used to share. Because our world expanded to more people, we know less about each one. Our connections don’t seem as deep or as lasting, because they are easy. When we had to work at it, did we invest more of ourselves in each moment. We shared more, we gave more, we truly bonded. We may not have talked about what we had for lunch, but we bonded. I think about my great-grandmother — she knew the art of visiting. You could go to her house and sit in the front room and just visit. You could be there for 30 minutes or hours and she’d chat and you’d chat. You’d leave thinking you’d really shared something and I can tell you that she was more connected with the world around her than any interwebs would allow. It was because she understood (and practiced) two things: She knew people and how to bond.
So, I’m challenging you (and myself) to step away from the keyboard, to write an old fashioned letter to someone (with a real stamp — it might help the Post Office too), to sit with a cup of coffee and friend and turn off your cell phone. I challenge you to an hour, single hour, of off time. Turn off the phone, turn off the computer, don’t text, e-mail, call. Sit face to face with someone, and learn how to bond again.
March 2nd, 2010 at 5:34 pm
HMM very interesting and true…