Recently, I got to thinking: is technology really making our everyday activities more efficient an giving us more time to spend on other stuff?
Taking the train each day to work and uni, I see many characters get on and off. All of them sharing one thing: they’re all clutching a smart phone in one of their hands.
There’s always so many conversations, thoughts and videos going on in every carriage, but yet no one is actually talking, or at least to each other anyway.
The guy next to me is frustrated because his phone forgot to remind him about the his 10 o’clock meeting that morning, which he subsequently missed. The girl opposite me is smiling as she scrolls through Facebook pages. The older man a few seats ahead of me is listening to a video on the Ukraine and Russia tension out loud. Guess he hasn’t caught on to the headphone phenomenon.
All of this got me thinking… Are smart phones really making our lives easier? Or are they separating us from humanity? Are we becoming so consumed seeking information through these technology platforms that we get lost in this virtual space?
After talking to friends about this, one of them put it like this:
“My iPhone makes my life easier. I get so much more done!”
http://youtu.be/bRKOB2xY4Ao
At first, to a degree I agreed with her statement. But, after thinking about it, I thought about how we define what making our lives easier actually means. Sure, computers, and in particular the ones that follow us around (phones and tablets) can help us to do more on the run. Sure, they have allowed us to do things that we could never do ten or twenty years ago out on a train, or on a walk, or at the shops. We can schedule meetings, talk to people, get global news at the press of a button. But, is all of this information actually bombarding us?
Now that I have an iPhone, I can’t seem to go anywhere without it. It has my meetings, alarms to pick things up, do homework, what to buy at the shops, and even, recently, when to hang out with friends. I know –v. sad. I now need my phone to remind me to be social.
And, it’s not the fact that I need to remind myself to have fun. It’s that I have come to rely on my phone so much, that I simply forget what I am supposed to be doing.
Recently, I went to Vietnam with my Mum and sister. None of us had our phones. And, the very first thing that happened… Mum hadn’t printed off our Visas properly. So, then began the mad rush to the nearest airline lounge to beg to use their computer because we had none of our own. Next came the getting lost in Ha Noi with my sister. We were fine because we were together. But, with no paper map, relying on the iPad, which lost battery, and completely separated by the language barrier, we were stuck. I even lost track of time… Oops! Yes, because of course I rely on my phone to tell me the time.
This obsession with computers and communication via technological platforms such as Facebook, email, Tinder, Instagram and Twitter even follows us on dates and finding a partner!
Recently, I was sitting at a bar in Brunswick with a couple of friends. One of them was looking around scouting hotties, while the other had her eyes glued to her phone. I asked what she was doing. Turns out, she was on Tinder checking out if there were any good looking guys at the bar that night. OPEN YOUR EYES WOMAN AND LOOK AROUND YOU! We can’t even rely on our own primary senses anymore to find places, people or information!
Here’s a an article from The Australian on what Tinder is, if you don’t know.
Leading lives with so much reliance on computers means that we start to lose our abilities to communicate naturally. Our personal computers are also way over complicating things. In simplifying, they’re really just giving us more stuff to do, more places to look, more things to look out for. So, in my opinion, that’s just plain hard. Not easy.