Our Existence
Well today we enter the blogging world. No, there are no followers, it is simply an attempt to be. Isn't that what we all want anyway? Just to be. There is something beautiful about the written word that is often lost in the text based communication of this age. We have been on a slippery slope traveling downward at an ever increasing rate.
Sometimes from a distance I look at the life of my 93 year old grandmother. I think of the change she has seen in America and the world. The changes seem so dramatic, so historic. She has witnessed world wars and amazing developments in technology. Her living memory touches the memory of those who knew the nation when it was still young. When I compare her life to my own I feel as if I am standing still. While this may be the result of my myopic vision perhaps one of the biggest changes of my life, a little less than half of hers, is the written word itself. When I was young we wrote letters. We waited for a response to come. I reached out to pen pals around the world and was amazed to find commonality hidden in the words behind a beautiful exotic stamp. Each letter was composed. It was an exercise in thought because you knew it could be a month or more before a response arrived. Then things changed. It started slowly as email took control of our lives. The human quest for instant gratification seemed fulfilled. I came to terms with it while lamenting that the endless words and thoughts composed were eliminated with a key stroke. No longer were they stored in a dusty shoe box under a bed. They were as ephemeral as the mind that created them.
I confess, I did like the instant response. It seemed like the pleasure and ability to find new and interesting people was expanded a hundred fold. Suddenly the world was there. Then came the instant message. Again, it tickled the human desire for instant gratification. A person was actually on the other side responding to each statement. It was safe, anonymous yet real. This is when the technology and I parted. I hated that my time for thought was stolen as my fingers reached for the next pointless thought to convey. It needed only moments. Scarcely the time necessary for a person to even contemplate the succeeding thoughts. Suddenly I felt myself stepping backward. The people that were amazingly available no longer wanted to spend the time to write. An email might be exchanged followed by a chat request. At that point it was over. There was no turning back. Availability was expected to be immediate and when it was not or when the conversation had no depth boredom set in and the communication ended. The text message only complemented this.
We moved to My Space and Facebook. The ability to make connections with others was enormous yet the very medium is very "me" centered. It tells everyone to peer into my life.
Finally, the most insidious invention came to be. It came in the form of a cute name, the tweet. The tweet achieved what no other form of communication could. It was brief and it catered to the human beings most self-centered desire. The message at last, was all about them. No one else need respond.
I guess the world is changing but is it for the better. I am not sure. Perhaps my 93 year old grandmother feels the same way. Or perhaps as she logs on to her webtv to search the internet she doesn't think twice about the "good old days."
Sometimes from a distance I look at the life of my 93 year old grandmother. I think of the change she has seen in America and the world. The changes seem so dramatic, so historic. She has witnessed world wars and amazing developments in technology. Her living memory touches the memory of those who knew the nation when it was still young. When I compare her life to my own I feel as if I am standing still. While this may be the result of my myopic vision perhaps one of the biggest changes of my life, a little less than half of hers, is the written word itself. When I was young we wrote letters. We waited for a response to come. I reached out to pen pals around the world and was amazed to find commonality hidden in the words behind a beautiful exotic stamp. Each letter was composed. It was an exercise in thought because you knew it could be a month or more before a response arrived. Then things changed. It started slowly as email took control of our lives. The human quest for instant gratification seemed fulfilled. I came to terms with it while lamenting that the endless words and thoughts composed were eliminated with a key stroke. No longer were they stored in a dusty shoe box under a bed. They were as ephemeral as the mind that created them.
I confess, I did like the instant response. It seemed like the pleasure and ability to find new and interesting people was expanded a hundred fold. Suddenly the world was there. Then came the instant message. Again, it tickled the human desire for instant gratification. A person was actually on the other side responding to each statement. It was safe, anonymous yet real. This is when the technology and I parted. I hated that my time for thought was stolen as my fingers reached for the next pointless thought to convey. It needed only moments. Scarcely the time necessary for a person to even contemplate the succeeding thoughts. Suddenly I felt myself stepping backward. The people that were amazingly available no longer wanted to spend the time to write. An email might be exchanged followed by a chat request. At that point it was over. There was no turning back. Availability was expected to be immediate and when it was not or when the conversation had no depth boredom set in and the communication ended. The text message only complemented this.
We moved to My Space and Facebook. The ability to make connections with others was enormous yet the very medium is very "me" centered. It tells everyone to peer into my life.
Finally, the most insidious invention came to be. It came in the form of a cute name, the tweet. The tweet achieved what no other form of communication could. It was brief and it catered to the human beings most self-centered desire. The message at last, was all about them. No one else need respond.
I guess the world is changing but is it for the better. I am not sure. Perhaps my 93 year old grandmother feels the same way. Or perhaps as she logs on to her webtv to search the internet she doesn't think twice about the "good old days."
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