Blogging for January 16, 2010

I really have to get out more. I was at my nephew Scott’s Winter Classic hockey party on New Year’s Day and there was quite a range of ages there: from me the oldest to another nephew who is 24. The average would have been around 40. Everyone had cell phones and throughout the game and long after they were either talking or texting almost continuously, at least for the 24-year-old. What does this mean about where our society is going when we feel compelled for some reason to be communicating nonstop with other people who could not possible be interested in what we are doing at a ‘sausage’ party where ten guys, three of whom did not have cell phones were watching an NHL hockey game being played outdoors.
If I was on the other end of a text or a phone call I think I know what my reaction would be. Do I really have to know how many beer you’ve had, or who is at the party and who isn’t? I would imagine this is only going to get worse. The day is coming, I suppose, when everyone from nine to thirty-nine will be constantly in touch electronically with someone or other. Is this the beginning of the end of conversations; you know, face-to-face conversations where you actually look someone in the eye when you are talking to him?
If I was a little nosier, I would have asked anyone of the many people there if he minded sharing with me what he had texted. I’m just guessing now mind you, but I will assume that spelling, grammar, punctuation, and capitalization do not exist when you text or twitter. Can you twitter from your cell phone? I wouldn’t be surprised. Heard a great commercial the other day about a cell phone that was also a weed wacker. Loved it. But I digress.
As with any of these sea changes in technology and how it has such an immediate and profound, often, impact on our lives, especially if you are young, it makes me wonder what is just around the corner that will make it even more difficult, more stressful to teachers and parents to get their children to work on their writing skills and their people skills. How far away are we from a society that increasingly becomes more distant, more inclined to be indifferent to what happens to our fellow human beings? How far away are we from ignoring, at our own peril, the tell tale signs of a society that has become more and more robotic and less and less human?
It would seem we are becoming more tethered to our toys, our electronic toys that give us an added layer of indifference or distance from our fellow man. We use these devices to help us keep our distance from relationships and family contact too. We often use these intermediary devices to keep us in contact with our parents, our siblings, and our friends in a world that is increasingly becoming more and more remote. Will the time come when we are in a face-to-face conversation or confrontation and we will be at a loss for words? It wouldn’t surprise me at all if the intimates in this conversation/confrontation resorted to texting each other as they faced one another, less than a meter apart.
Have I seen the future for my two-week old grandson? Is this what his life will be like, only much worse? Will people in twenty years even be talking to each other in what we consider today to be normal? Will the electronic age be so much a fundamental part of our lives that we will be unwilling, or perhaps, unable to carry on a conversation with anyone unless there is some form of electronic device to act as an intermediary between us? Will Kaeden grow up doing more texting than talking? How will the grandparents ever be able to be a part of his world, a world that increasingly has become more remote and less human?
I’m not sure I want to tarry too long pondering the answers to these vexing questions. I think I would rather just talk with my grandson about what he is up to, etc.