Monday, November 16, 2009

:)


Technology sparks warped thought in my brain.

But to preface this blog- I must admit I have a love/hate relationship with technology, in the sense that it creates a disconnect in society. In the way that I feel like people find it harder to communicate with others, making society that more disconnected from each other that one must turn to something like internet dating. I feel like this piece by Seurat was a foreshadowing of this predicament. If you look at the piece, it depicts a community, all in one place yet no one is interacting. All the individuals are staring straight ahead and are completely disconnected from one another. When I look at society now, that is what I see, everything is now interpreted so technologically.

The real topic that lead me to think about this conundrum was the fact that I got a text message from, well, a former guy that I used to see and it was something along the lines of,

"Patrice, long time no talk. How are you? You never texted me back before :("

My immediate mental response was to scoff at the text. After thoroughly trying to analyze and decipher the text with my co workers, the conclusion was reached that, with the last piece of that message, the emoticon- a strong gust of desperateness lingered with the entire message. Overlooking the possible motives or intent behind the message on his part, I am inclined to wonder how a semicolon and a parenthetical mark could give off such a message. Through technology we are expressing, in a way, body language, without even seeing the individual. It's curious. How many times do you relay something over an email or text message that in reality, you probably could not pull yourself to say in person? I don't put myself on a pedestal and try to say that I am not guilty of the above, but I stand on grounds questioning the above. I fear the day that humans only relay their emotions and feelings via some sort of technology. Community and true verbal communication seem to be becoming obsolete.

No comments:

Post a Comment