I have recently gone through the rather unpleasant experience of losing my cell phone. Not to muggers, petty opportunistic thieves, or an inopportunely placed toilet bowl, but rather to the inevitable death of these cleverly designed batteries that are created to last just long enough to get you through 2 years to your next upgrade, when you are forced to spend another few thousand of your hard earned monies on a phone with more functions than you could ever actually use or honestly even comprehend.
Anybody remember the good old days when you danced into the store with great excitement to buy the new Nokia 3310 you had been dying to get, for only a few hundred bucks, along with a simple contract that offered free minutes (or airtime) and SMS bundles? Oh, for the simple days when you could just pay for (and get) exactly what you needed, and nothing more. I am now faced with the impossible task of deciding on a new contract that I already know will offer me not nearly enough data (remember when data wasn't even a thing??), almost enough free minutes, and about 1000 SMSes I don't need and will hardly use. I could also be the lucky winner of a voucher to the value of R10 000 for some online educational thing I don't need or understand, and perhaps another whole bundle of "free" SMSes to remind me how much my patronage is "valued". Yay for free stuff? I think not...
Unfortunately it took me all of 10 minutes after the demise of my phone on Monday morning to come to the annoying realisation that I am essentially cut off from the world without it. Being a young working minion, living alone and spending almost all of my salary on life (i.e. rent, gym, petrol, food, and a completely-over-priced-and-mostly-worthless cell phone contract), I find I haven't much money left for luxuries like Wi-Fi or a home phone (home phones are, in any case, somewhat a thing of the past). My time will come for such niceties, but for now (without a cell phone) my instant communications are limited to either social networks, or e-mails - all of which I only have access to if I have either internet (which I don't) or my cell phone (which, of course, is now dead and useless). Also, the phone numbers that were, once upon a time, conveniently stored either in my memory or in a phone book, are now all sitting on the cell phone that no longer works. Yes, nowadays there are amazing services that allow you to back up all your phone data onto a "cloud" for just such a situation, but just remind me quickly how we access this cloud? Ah yes, via the internet I don't have or the deceased cell phone I can no longer use!What a fantastic system of mindless dependence.
So now we come to the reason for this post - the concept that plagues my mind and, if I'm honest, kinda pisses me off at the same time: people are so dependent on (and often also addicted to) technology these days, that the phone, television and computer companies can lump pretty much anything they want into a "bundle" and we have no choice but to fork out far more than we can afford each month for a bunch of services/goods that contains 75% unwanted rubbish, just to get the 25% of the product that we actually need and/or want.
Requests like "I just need a contract that allows me to make unlimited phone calls and send about 300 messages a month" are met with responses along the lines of "Absolutely, sir. If you just sign away your house and your car, and agree to participate in forced labour every second Saturday for the rest of eternity, you can have exactly that in our new incredible deal that also offers you unlimited free tyres (for the car you'll no longer own) and a complimentary house cleaning and gardening service every Thursday (for the house you no longer live in)". Or, one might say "I just want television channels that give me news, sports and some movies on weekends" and in response, one will hear "Yes ma'am, that's no problem. Our sports/news/movies package only costs your firstborn child and half your soul. Plus, to show you just how much we value you as a customer, we'll even throw in 200 Nollywood channels (Nigerian "Hollywood", for those who think that's a typo), the entire Asian parliamentary package and a handful of Russian soap opera channels with no subtitles, for absolutely no extra charge! Would you like to sign the contract in blood, or would you prefer a handshake with Satan himself? I believe he'll be coming in on Saturday morning to discuss next month's specials with the store manager."
How are we supposed to afford this stuff? And when we can't, how are we supposed to be functional (and I don't mean brain functional, I mean business/life functional), stay connected and keep up in a world that moves at the speed of a nuclear missile and runs almost entirely on technology??? Is our only option then to move into an Amish community where this stuff is not needed to be a fully functioning and productive member of society? I honestly believe that technology is slowly sucking innumerable and invaluable life skills from people (skills like spelling, socialisation, authenticity, attention, patience, inhibition...) - and this is not just the working 30-something-year-old people who "need" 3 phones, a tablet, 2 laptops, a home PC and an Apple watch to make sure they keep up with life. This is everybody! Kids of all ages, who spend such a monumental portion of their time glued to some form of technology that the power of simple spelling and vocabulary is fast becoming a legend of old; young moms, who spend so much time on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, blah blah blah blah blah that by the time they look up, their kids are in high school; young power couples who get dressed up to the nines, go on dates to the most fabulous restaurants, and spend more time staring at a screen than at each other (I have seen this time and again, and am fairly convinced that they actually chat to each other on their phones during the date); families who go out to dinner, and all four of them are on some form of phone or tablet; groups of kids "hanging out" together, without any of them interacting in person because they're all playing some online game together... The list is endless.
I know, I know, I sound like Grouchy Grandma. But I'm not necessarily wrong! The thing that makes this so highly disconcerting for me, is that this obsession with technology, social media, selfies, and apps is slowly dumbing down the humanity in us. The average person that I have encountered (and I readily admit I am sometimes guilty of this, too), finds it near to impossible to actually sit with somebody and hold an entire conversation without compulsively checking their phone every few minutes for a message or notification of some kind. Emoticons are becoming increasingly frequent in messages, because now that we have so many (what can't you say simply by stringing together a line of emoticons?), if a message is sent without one, we struggle to understand the tone behind it. For every minute that we are glued to these screens, we are missing genuine emotions, expressions, interactions with real humans. Many of us are slowly losing the ability to human (I know that's not a verb, but it's how I think - deal with it), because we are becoming so conditioned to this digital life that it's becoming harder for many people to be authentic and present in real life at all. These "emotions" with cute blushing red cheeks (happiness), fantastically large rolled eyes (annoyance), a bright red scowling face (anger), a heart coming from pursed lips (a kiss), etc. make it harder for some to identify (and react to) actual emotions that are often masked and not expressed in quite such an obvious fashion.
There are so many other aspects that are equally problematic: the digital babysitter (television) in front of which so many children grow up (a major bone of major contention for me, but that is a story for a whole new post); the number of deaths caused by really idiotic people trying to take "extreme" selfies; and let's take a moment to ponder this latest craze - Pokemon Go - that is literally causing people to get injured and/or die. Granted it's only a few deaths and mostly a lot of injuries, and given the nature of the causes (walking off a cliff, crossing a busy highway and getting hit by a truck, hitting a pedestrian who's crossing the highway, wrapping a car around a tree, to name but a few), some might be quite inclined to say that it's natural selection at work. Either way, these are reckless and self-destructive behaviours.
My point (if you've been able to keep track through the epic ramblings) is that technology is dangerous. Not in the "it could destroy the world in the wrong hands, or with one push of a button" sense of the word (although that, too, is a valid point) but in the "it could destroy the world by causing humanity to become even more deficient than the self-absorbed, self-destructive nutcases we already are" kinda way. Case in point: look what temporarily losing my cell phone did to my thoughts! :-)
Until next time...
Quote for the day: "I fear the day that technology will surpass our human interaction. The world will have a generation of idiots." - Albert Einstein
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