The sooner we realize and accept the fact we are in a new era of communications and technology, the better off we'll all be, especially those of us in a certain ... ahh, a certain age category.
The presenter I was listening to was informing us that we have, or are quickly becoming, slaves to our technology. We are servants to the new reality. We serve it, it doesn't serve us, is what she was getting at.
We are learning to program ourselves and our time to serve this new master.
She said she caused a stir among her friends and family when she decided to shut down her Facebook page. She was told that even if people no longer actually used it, you never shut it down.
But, she explained, after discovering the game was really about advertising with the servers needing to sell product or boost numbers rather than actually connecting with friends, she determined it wasn't worth it. She had lost control of her message.
The lady basically suggested that since we have become a society obsessed with apps and all that comes with them, we have lost control of our lives. We are more dedicated to them than we are to one another. We believe we are communicating with one another when, in reality, we aren't doing that at all, but rather doing service to master control.
I found the presentation a rather interesting exploration of a concept and that she might have hit fairly close to the communication bull's eye.
Is she wrong?
Can you live without your smart phone or iPhone e-mail, Facebook or Twitter account for a day?
The truth be known, whether you want to admit it or not ... is probably not, not if you're under the age of 50.
You are addicted.
That's not necessarily bad. It is what it is.
When Internet services go down, are you one who panics? Or are you one of us who merely find it amusing while reverting to old-time options to get a job done and living a life? Either one of these attitudes is realistic and let's face it, in today's world, if the Internet stays down for too long, we're all hooped. As I said, we are enslaved to it. That's fact. No back-out options with any staying power available any more. No manual override here. We're in for the cyber ride.
But, as the speaker pointed out, those who encountered the industrial revolution feared they were enslaved to it too but then clocks became more popular, and they discovered that they could offer talent by hiring themselves out based on time, as well as product. They developed options.
There was a time when our society of not too long ago, feared enslavement to television.
In today's world, cyber stuff is working well in both worlds. We use it for work as well as for entertainment. All kinds of flexibility. There ain't anything it can't do.
As a result, there ain't anything we can do without it, or at least we are led to believe that. And therefore, I submit my original Exhibit A ... we are enslaved, hooked, addicted, beholden to and just downright owned by the Internet. I say enjoy the ride my friend, there's a lot more to come ... pretty well every few minutes to be more precise because that is the speed of the need we have created and then lost control of somewhere half past Bill Gates and Mark Zukerberg and a quarter past Wikipedia and yesterday's lost Tweet.
