Mixed Feelings

Technology kind of ruins everything.

Twenty years ago or even less, you knew if someone wanted to be your friend because they would make an effort to find you, or visit you, or talk to you. Long letters took a bit of effort but people would do it. Phone calls weren’t always cheap but people would make them. Phone calls required having to actually talk to the person, and you had to want to coordinate your time together.

And now they have texting and Facebook, and you can comment when you want or text little tidbits and never really talk or communicate and that’s an excuse for getting to know the other person. You can say, “Sorry, didn’t see your text.” You can misinterpret what other people are suggesting, assuming that they don’t like you because they don’t use this or that emoticon, or they just say one simple word like “yeah,” or “ok,” or “lol”.

I don’t see my mom very often and when I do, she has her phone out, ready to respond to anyone who texts or instant messages her, right away. She has to respond right away. No waiting. If she waits, she thinks the person who started the conversation will get mad. So she sits across from me at the table, telling me “I don’t know why your brother is texting me this. Do you know what this means? I’m going to tell him he should call me so we can talk about it—my phone is so slow—”. When we’re at home and I come downstairs and ask my mom if she wants to go for a walk, she tells me, well, she doesn’t say anything. I ask her again and she says “SHH. I’m—oops—” and then in another ten minutes she’ll say, “just a minute, Katie, I’m writing an email”. And half an hour later we’ll go for a walk, where she’ll start texting her friends or playing Words with Friends and talk about how I haven’t been calling her often enough while I’m at school.

I know I’m ranting by saying all this. But I’m studying technology in college, Information Science and how people interact with computers, and just think it’s kind of sad, even though it’s supposed to be interesting. Society is changing all the time and technology just kind of changes it along a different path. Different from what was predicted, because the internet and phones and video broadcasting and everything else were never intended for personal use at all.

And I do love being able to contact people and keep in touch with people who I wouldn’t normally keep in touch with. I love being able to text during class or leave a voicemail for someone who isn’t around, or to share pictures with family on Facebook. The other day I got a call from my Grandma telling me how much she loves my pictures. She loves to see what my brothers and my parents and I are up to whenever she logs in. She told me she thought it was funny that my older brother was throwing a housewarming party, and laughed over the description having to do with wanting people to bring alcohol. She would never have been able to laugh about that if we didn’t all have Facebook to keep connected. She’d always want to know what’s going on, but would never be able to, because getting prints of photographs can get expensive, especially if I am to get separate prints for her to be able to see them, since I see her once a year. And those are just photographs.

Technology does kind of ruin everything. But only kind of.