: Digital validation

By: g | No Comments » |

I did a piece some time back about the ‘lust’ of technology as it pertains to art – something about using 3D programs to recreate what is effectively a photograph and questioning the point of it all. Lately though I have been pondering technology on the whole, as it pertains to our every day life. This pondering topped out last week when I was watching the interaction of a mother and her son while not enjoying a late afternoon coffee (it really was not very good) at the local food court.

It is fair to say that Australia on the whole is a tech fad crazy nation. These are not my findings but those of bigger more ‘informed’ corporate’s in the telco world. After Japan, I think Australia laps up tech in a manner that is not normal, bring the latest techno wonder out and no sooner will you see it all over the streets in downtown Sydney, the iPhone is the most recent of these, though I am sure not the last. It will be interesting to see the reach of the about to be released (locally) iPad.

But it is in watching this acceptance of these techno wonders that I personally have to wonder about the true benefit they offer to society as a  whole. Before I droll on, I will state upfront that I do not, nor will not, have an iPhone. I have an iPod, I WILL buy and iPad, but under no circumstance will I buy an iPhone. It’s important for me to put that out there because it ties directly into not only my, but other observer’s observations about the trend developing at a societal level with the infiltration of such technologies.

It seems for many out there, the need to be connected has consumed their lives. They can not go anywhere anymore without being ‘connected’. Watch the morning or afternoon commuters walking along, and a disturbing amount are doing ‘something online’. Go to dinner and at least one person will answer an email, SMS… or those ruder of the crowd will actually answer the phone while in the middle of dinner. I stood in line at the post office and watched the girl in front of me update her Facebook profile that ‘she was standing in line at the post office’! I can’t help but ponder, who actually cares?

Sure, I occasionally do it on my Twitter feed*… from my desktop. It is fun and I do have my share of witty banter through twitter. I though do not feel not need to share the humdrum of everyday life with others online when I walk out the door. But many do and I have to ask why? To me it seems that it has got to the point that for many people out there, the drivel they share with ‘everyone’ is some sort of strange self managed validity – I crap on, therefore I am. But what would these people do if they could not do this? We are supposed to be living in the most informed of all periods of time, information is at our fingertips. Why though is it that as a society we seem to be hitting the bottom of the barrel? We are more disfunctional then ever, the general level of knowledge is at an all time low and, in places like Sydney, relationships and interpersonal connections are more strained than ever.

On one hand as a collective, we so called communicate more than any other time in history but is that communication actually worth anything more than white noise, offering nothing more than an easy way to escape partaking in more meaningful discourse? After all, real discourse means having to be truly informed on real happenings, not just that your friend went to the can. It’s a tough question, social media is here to stay and I do believe in it. I partake in it (well, you are reading this!), as do others I know. I also enjoy the connections that are made through it. What concerns me is that for an increasing chunk of people out there, it has become their reason of being, in a perverse way giving them a form of validation and, I am sure, a feeling of importance that really does not exist. There are very few people in the world that are so important they can not enjoy dinner, a drink, whatever, without the need to spend half the time tapping into their Blackberry or iPhone no one has that much to say…. all the time.

So we come back to the mother and her little boy at 4pm at the local mall. She plonked him down, gave him food and then proceeded to spend the entire time ‘communicating’ on her ‘Berry, or whatever she was using. The whole time, while she was absorbed with her tiny screen, her son tried everything to get her attention, to participate with him. Yet, so absorbed was she, she failed to notice. Eventually he gave up and resorted to self absorbed silly antics and it was easily the saddest and most disturbing thing I had watched in some time. I am not sure what possibly could be so important for her to be treating her son like that, and judging by the shopping bags she was not ‘working’. I feel that she, like many others was ‘self validating’.

Maybe this is the honeymoon period, where people are drunk with this technology. If so, sooner of later we are going to sober up because, before the advent of 3G networks or SMS, we all managed to get by and it seems actually be just as social, if not genuinely more so, without the need to be in contact with everyone 24-7.

*Twitter is indeed an odd beast. On one hand it validates my argument but on the other hand, if you are connected to genuine people or ‘things’, who share interesting things, it can be really entertaining and informative.

 

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