Vocal Point: We’ve become impersonal technology junkies
Twelve of us sat around a conference room table in Utah, all with cell phones and laptops, all with similar jobs, but from different parts of the country.
Not long ago, a group of business folk such as ours would have splintered into a half-dozen side conversations the moment there was a break in the formal discussions. But not this time. Whenever our meeting hit a pause, we all looked down toward our laptops’ glowing displays and checked our e-mail, the weather or the stock market, or deftly scrolled through messages on cell phones.
It was like that for two days.
At so many similar meetings in years past, the best dialogues and juiciest tidbits came from those now-absent side conversations. Our group doesn’t meet all that often and I’m sure there were plenty of stories to tell. Technical people love to recount tales of reluctant software and brag about powerful new hardware, sharing anecdotes and frustrations about their customers and supervisors.
But something was missing this trip. Yes, it was a meeting of a technical services group and loquaciousness isn’t usually a hallmark of our breed. Armed with the latest computer bling, we can remotely manage equipment thousands of miles away and track the speed and direction of vehicles using GPS on a cell phone. Yet, gathered together in a quiet conference room on a cold January day, we’re not fully engaged with each other because we can no longer give the person facing us – talking to us – our complete and undivided attention for more than a few minutes. Connected via electronic umbilical cords to a continuous stream of demanding and distracting information, we’re disconnected from those around us.
We’ve become technology junkies.
Instead of sending a birthday card with a hand-written note scrawled inside – something that can be touched, held up in the light and passed around the room for others to touch and see – we send a two-dimensional animated electronic greeting that doesn’t pose the risk of a paper cut and can be forwarded with a couple of mouse clicks.
Instead of sending an overexposed 4-by-6 print with a note written on the back in loopy script – “Sorry, I only had a red pen, but isn’t Casey just adorable?” – we send photos hastily taken on our cell phones. I have some friends whose active-duty son announced his marriage this very way; all they got was a tiny, grainy picture of the bride and groom snapped from a phone.
It may be cute, quick and ingenious, but it’s impersonal.
Plenty of good things have resulted from technology, and I’m certain there are more blessed things to come. But the impact of all this cool stuff is not always good things for everyone.
Like Pavlov’s dog we’re trained to sit up and take notice at the sound of the tone. Nowadays practically everything electronic beeps, vibrates or does the fox trot, including the toaster, the washer and dryer and the gas pump. While there’s no law that requires us to answer, don’t you feel guilty when you miss a phone call? That stimulus-response conditioning extends to e-mail and instant messaging, which we’re constantly checking, as if the fate of the world depends on the speed of our answer.
It’s not even safe to use the bathroom anymore. I routinely see men using their cell phones while relieving themselves. The other day I overheard a man in the next stall chatting loudly with his wife and, because the speaker was really cranked up, I clearly heard her side of the conversation, too. Out of politeness I waited to flush the toilet until they were done. I hope their son’s surgery was a success.
We need to deflate that oft-quoted phrase that “information is power.” While there is truth in that expression, the real power in life is not the result of a Google search, it’s in face-to-face relationships. It’s not that important things aren’t done electronically; it’s that too many important things are being done electronically that used to be done better, and should be done, face-to-face.
Has technology become our real BFF?