Slaves of Technology

After plethora of ‘smart’ phones already out in the market, Microsoft jumped into the bandwagon as well. I came across their television ad showing how easily and efficiently one can check all their social updates so that one can actually go back to living life. Apart from the humorous puns intended, it does point out how fractured human life has become.

For many of us, our online life has taken precedence over the ‘normal’ life. We are slaves of technology now. Life now is unimaginable without cell phones, facebook and all other so-called social networks. Let’s face it, we all use it. We all like to think we are not addicted to all this. But matter of fact is, a perfectly normal day becomes nightmare when you realize that you have left your house and forgot your beloved cell phone on counter top. You can’t help feeling that you are cut off from your world or that you would miss someone’s phone call even though you might meet that person during the course of the day. Same goes for facebook, two days you try to live without it, but on the third day you are actually are excited to log on to facebook and check how many notifications or messages you got or how many of your friends posted new pictures or how many friends got into relationships.

There is nothing wrong with catching up the world, but what grinds my gear is the fact that most of such information can be gathered from proper social encounters. By social encounter, I mean actually meeting the person as it has been done through out human history. But sadly, we have entered into an era of life where meeting person isn’t as exciting or as appealing as meeting that person online. One example of our splintered society -which we can all relate to- is meeting some friend/colleague who talks to you while also has his Iphone or Blackberry in their hands. They would be talking to you while also multitasking and typing away on their phones. You might be talking about some serious issue but more often than not, those distracted people have a smile on their face because somebody on their phone said something funny. And when they realize that you have noticed that phone takes preference, they try to agree with whatever you said without even knowing what you said.

I might be hypocrite in saying all this, but it’s about time to follow what Microsoft ad said. It iss about time we focus on people and not let online life disconnect us from offline life. We don’t want to be at stage where we greet the person sitting in front of us by sending him online message do we?