Published on 12, July, 2020
Smartphones these days seem to be a requirement in order to be a human being.
My work are requiring me to download an app which I can't and won't do. I was asked a few years ago to become part of a work whatsapp group. I was indirectly made to feel I wasn't part of the team bease i couldnt and didnt want to be in it. Last night, instead of looking my name up on a computer for a ticket, a "box office assistant" made the person I was with re-download an app to get an e-ticket with an animated barcode. I know my stubbornness is making me technologically illiterate but I don't care.
We started becoming machines during the industrial revolution. Today we continue to advance toward this. It's part of our evolution as we get further away from who we were.
Technological advances are being made at a pace that outstrips our human evolutionary capacity to wield that technology wisely.
This is the essence of our species current woes, I believe.
Rather than enjoying and exploring and getting to grips with a new piece of tech innovation ..... "we" immediately throw it away and move on to the "next" tech innovation.
Having an "image" based method of interpersonal communication, that is driven by "advertising greed" at it's core, has been a massive mid-step in our evolutionary journey, I believe.
I've said before it creates solutions to problems that don't exist.
On a more personal level, I know as things get upgraded I will have to move with the times. Even simple things like USB connectors are different to a few years ago. The "image based communication" if I am understanding you rightly, has completely changed how people behave.
out_of_step said:if I am understanding you rightly, has completely changed how people behave.
No.....it's worse than that.....I believe it is changing how people THINK about everything....not least their own sense of worth or place in this world. It is scary.
I had a fab conversation with an 81yr old stranger about all this the other day. It was fabulous. She was fabulous.
The long-and-the-short of it is that, I believe, we continue to brainlessly stumble forward into an abyss that we don't understand but seem to wholly underestimate the self evident harms/impacts on our fragile perceptions on our own REAL worlds around (and within) each of us in person.
We're loosing it here...and I'm deeply worried about it, about "us"...perhaps I find that word of "hyperindividualised" scary because it is, perhaps, the polar opposite of the word "us."
Believe it or not....I prefer short words!
I can't remember the exact specificities of the conversation but we were talking (obvs) about social media
That is a scary word....I'm not sure how I can best visualise the concept and how I feel about it....but I do like the word.
You are right, and how we think affects how we behave.....my friend once used the term "hyperindividualised".