The Bad Side Of Technology

I start off a lot of my posts one way and then during the course of writing it, I start to take the other side. I guess I want to look at both points of an argument to make sure that I am taking the right position that lies within my personal beliefs. Maybe I am a bit of an enigma in that I am hard to figure out. I mean I hate a lot of things associated with technology and yet I work in a technological field. This causes me to have internal struggles each and every day at work.

The other day I was at work and a ticket came in for a guy I support. It seems his car was broken into and they stole his Blackberry. For those not in the know, a blackberry is a wireless device that is a cell phone, organizer, calculator, and phone book. It also has the ability to receive e-mails and you can surf certain web pages on it. Now, I don’t have nor do I want one. But, from what I can tell once you have one, you can’t live without it.

This must be the case because this guy went absolutely ape-shit over it getting stolen. Now, he must think I can just shit them out because he didn’t seem to understand the fact that he was going to have to order a new one. He was demanding that he couldn’t function without it and that he was losing valuable time and money with his inability to check his e-mail while taking a shit.

All of this made me wonder just what the fuck did this guy did before he had a blackberry? I mean if you are that dependent on this belt-buckle leash then there is a problem. As I said I am not against all technology out of hand. I just wonder sometimes how anything ever got done in the 70’s with nothing more then a telephone and a legal pad? Did people actually answer the phone before caller ID and voice mail?

I believe it is more of a symptom of a bigger issue and that is that we have become to reachable. Before, blackberries, cell phones, e-mail and pagers the world seemed happy enough. I mean people actually had to interact with each other in person. Now, I know that all of those devices do a lot of good. I mean I would not want Joyce to leave the house without a cell phone for fear of her getting lost or if the car broke down she would have no way of getting a hold of me. On the other hand, we have overused these devices.

There is nothing worse then walking down the street and you see some yahoo yammering away to seemingly himself. You get closer to him and you see he has that annoying hands-free device stuck to his ear. I guess in this age of mulit-tasking where you can’t just be doing one thing at a time, you have to have your attention split among various activities. My view of a cell phone is that it is for informational calls only. Other then the who, what, where, when, why, and how calls cell phones should not be used.

I know I am going to get shit for that sentiment. I mean I am not a phone guy to begin with. I never have been one to talk on the phone for extended periods of time. If I want to talk to you I would much rather have a conversation face to face. Body language and eye contact cannot be maintained or judged over the phone. You cannot underestimate how important those factors can be when having a conversation.

So, as we become more “dependent” on technology I think we have lost something. Instead of going to the store you can buy everything over the internet. Instead of talking to someone you can send them an instant message. Instead of playing baseball with your friends you turn on your Xbox and play a video game. I feel that in time inter-personal relationships will be affected by all of this behavior. Learning to deal with people is a skill that can only be learned through experience. As much as I bitch about people (and there is a never-ending source of material) I try to like people. Sometimes they disappoint me, but that doesn’t mean I am giving up.