Saturday, September 05, 2009

What happened to interaction?

Do you remember when you was a kid? When all you had to do was go up to another kid and say: "Wanna play catch?" Now it hard to catch a glance at someone who isn't eye deep into a little tiny screen. Is this what we are heading for? No one even talking to each other face to face. All our interactions will be through little screens, flashing and flickering responses right and left. How can we ever survive as a people when we don't even have the skills to talk to live people. I used to be like that. Only way I could connect to people was through a screen. Now I see the futility of it. I only use Facebook as a means to interact with those who haven't broken the habit yet. It's like that scene in Demolition Man, you know the one. Where Sandra Bullock and Sylvester Stallone were about to have sex using a digital simulator. Will one day, sex be digitized and virtualized and the old method will seem gross. I can't really express my feelings about that subject here but if you want to ask me offline, please do.  Texting and Tweets have become the new age version of the "Post it" notes. Texting while driving has become an issue. I remember one instance where a girl almost fell down a flight of steps texting a friend. When did self-preservation take a backseat then? I can't tell you times that I have had to just cut people off because they were slowly losing their grip on reality. Myspace has become a hive of scum and villainy much like a certain spaceport from a popular sci-fi film (the name escapes me at this point). The profiles are so brightly colored that it is like a HTML web designer dropping acid. Music blaring, photos flashing and lists of countless friends (real and non-real) clutter the pages. Friends are treated as status symbols. You aren't popular if you don't have 100,000 friends. I think we heading into a direction like Wall-E. Sitting hovering chassis loungers, fat, looking into screens and complaining about holo-dates gone awry. Every night, I pray for the nation. Hoping that will break free from the shackles of these little screens. Try this as an experiment. Go up to a person and say hi. Start a conversation or just make small talk and see how you feel. You might just be on the path to human interaction. Keep Hope Alive and get some fresh air.

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