Sometimes I wish that certain technology hadn't been invented. I read my favorite books that all happen to be based in the 1800s and I find a twinge of jealousy developing as I read. Yes, it took them a long time to travel from place to place, or to contact one another, but that's the beauty of it. People wrote letters to one another; not hasty text messages or a Facebook post, but long, thought out, beautifully written letters. They were able to spill their secrets, their feelings, every emotion onto these pages, the truth just pouring out. To me, reading something on a screen may be truthful, but it doesn't feel real or personal. What happened to the passion?
I feel like Facebook is a downward spiral that sucks anyone in. You get updates on people that you'd rather not remember, ex-boyfriends, ex-friends etc. You think you're done with thinking about them then wham! a post on the News Feed about how that certain person is in a new relationship. Kind of like a slap in the face.
A few friends and I were watching
A Lot Like Love, a romantic comedy from the 90's, and we were all cracking at the telephone scene- basically the two main characters were on land-lines and they kept getting interrupted by family members picking up the phone. One of my friends made the comment that they wished we didn't have cell phones, that funny things like this would happen if we didn't have them. Pause. Think. A life without cell phones. Our society has become so dependent upon them that we freak out if we are parted from this small piece of technology for more than a few hours, or should I dare say, a few minutes. Now, I'll admit that I'm constantly checking my emails on my phone, but it would be so nice if when walking to class I wasn't constantly getting beeped or buzzed. My friends and I kept laughing about how much trouble we would could get out of from not having a cell phone- no drunk texting, no drama, no butt dialing. Ahhh just imagine.
But how would our society move forward without all these technological advances? And hey, I'm a PR major so I should be loving all this stuff right? I guess it's all about moderation. Limiting oneself to Facebook, email, Twitter, and texting. But has it reached a point in our society that stopping or limiting is out of the question? And where do you begin with that? Where do you start to limit? If only I had the wonderful writers Jane Austen, Alexandre Dumas, and Charlotte Bronte to tell me what to do- to show me how to bring beauty back into communicating among others.
