Dump your Blackberry

I have come to realize how impersonal and mechanical our society has become. The daily interchanges we share with each other are increasingly had through some form of technology, and in the fleetingly rare case that we can actually interact face to face there is some sort of technology that interferes. This isn't to say that the development of new technologies and better communications is a bad thing, but it is certainly inhibiting the ways in which people have communicated for millennia.

For instance, at work, I have found that as more and more people get Blackberries, people in any form of service industry are treated more and more like they are part of a machine. You simply walk up to the counter and tell the thing behind it what you want and after paying and waiting a few moments, you are on your way. And thanks to your Blackberry, you have been emailing, texting, web browsing, etc. all along. The "hello, how are you?" routine is becoming increasingly rare.

There is more to this than just the loss of face-to-face interaction and curtosy. The more we allow each other to exist solely through various technological mediums, the less likely we are to maintain the image of the humanity of others. People stop becoming people and just become names stored in hard drives. This disconnect doesn't allow us to see ourselves in others because we are real, and they are simply data arranged in ways that represents what is supposedly a person on the other end. When we forget this basic tennant, we submit our own humanity.

The human experience has and always will be a social one. Without each other our species would have never survived. It took groups of people to hunt game and gather nuts and berries before we figured out how to farm. And once the aggricultural revolution came about, it took groups of farmers to provide for a society. The induction of the written record has allowed scientists to work hand in hand with their predecesors in history despite living centuries apart. In essence, we rely on one another for our survival and for social progress. Now that we have reached a point where technology is erasing our sense of others and simply focusing our concerns on ourselves, what will become of our society?

Thankfully, another aspect of humanity is that people are capable of adapting to change. So will the loss of interpersonal interaction lead to humanity's downfall? I doubt it. I would like to think that this is some sort of intermediate stage and that in the future, further developments in technology will bring people back together.

...or maybe I'm just crazy.

And yes, I realize the irony in writing all this on a blog, while checking my email, texts, and Facebook.