Discussion»Questions»Computers and the Internet» It is increasingly difficult to ascertain where humans leave off and their electronic devices begin. Have we morphed into one entity?
If you walk any place where there a lot of people, you will find that more than half of them are attached at the hand to an iPhone or some other electronic device. I believe that some may have had them implanted.
There was a programme on the radio only this evening about this depressing possibility, and an essay looking back wryly but thoughtfully on the writer's own digital up-bringing.
One speaker, a woman, seemed very keen on the possibility that in time not only "we" won't need sexual intercourse to have babies (that can & does happen now) but we won't even really need to meet anyone in the first place. Apparently there is now an application that helpfully measures your physiological responses such as heart-rate, to emotion. I didn't really understand why, but the gist appeared to be that one's emotions and relationships could all (and only?) be governed by artificial aids. I pity the child born of in-vitro conception to the single parent unable to form natural relationships without the aid of a heart-rate monitor and some anonymous computer-programmer's idea of how human emotions should work. Some early-20C novels examined the notion of a dystopia in which even reproduction is artificially and rigidly controlled - perhaps they are less fantasy than we used to think.
The essayist went from his own parents being very ignorant of modern developments - having no more than a lap-top and a wire-less phone - via the common habit of restaurant customers adding their phones to the cutlery on their restaurant tables, to his young female cousin who spent most of their family Christmas chatting by text oblivious to those actually in the same room with her.
I wonder if one day there will be a back-lash against the "one entity" life? A return at least in part to putting face-to-face before Facebook, to talking by voice on telephones only when necessary or when having something worth saying, even to writing physical letters? Or will so many by then have so isolated themselves by their electronic gadgets, so cut themselves adrift on their binary ocean, that they can only live as hermits in crowds, with very narrow tastes and interests, the social graces of a gnu, and no real ability to form genuine personal relationships even simply as friends?
Thank you for your very thoughtful and insightful analysis of the way things are Durdle. Depressing as he** ain't it? It is getting worserer not betterer. I asked a question this morning about the pendulum swinging in the other direction politically. I wonder if it will do so electronically or if that toothpaste is out of the tube and can never be put back? Happy Thursday! :)
One curious aspect is that sales of vinyl records have risen considerably, apparently as many music collectors find digital recordings too perfect so rather clinical!
I'm not so bothered by people being frightened to be far from their little boxes of electronics, as by the poor etiquette resulting from the addiction/ I'm sometimes irritated by the strangely naive assumptions made by the I-Thingy-toting "lifestyle" columnists of The Switched-on Family We-All.
My so-called "mobile" 'phone is just that - a text and voice, portable radio transmitter/receiver. No camera, no Internet access; no Blue Tooth (sounds like a dental problem among sheep grazing in Winter...); but it has a few auxiliaries like alarm-clock and calculator. And 2 or 3 games I don't play. It's next to my monitor now, only just switched it off. When I'm out, alone or especially in company, it spends most of its time switched off, and obviously it's off when I'm driving or at some event like a public lecture or a club's annual dinner.
O-uknow 