Category: Culture Page 1 of 2

Half the world is composed of people who have something to say and can’t, and the other half who have nothing to say and keep on saynig it.

– Robert Frost

The quote above just about sums up the world we live in today. Times have changed — technology has connected us yet we have made ourselves more disconnected. With changing times the way humans interact has also changed. So subtle has been the change that we have collectively fallen into the trap of being disconnected.

There was a time when people sent letters or cards to communicate with others, to stay in touch and remain connected to other people who were not living close by. For those who lived in the same city or locality, people went down to their place to meet them. Other than homes, people went to cafés or some such common meeting places. That was far more intimate way to stay in touch than what we experience today. It surely was not an efficient way, as a lot of time and some basic planning was needed to do all that. Quite unlike today when people are only a call or message away, wherever on Earth they maybe. During the days gone by a letter was worth many thoughts. At times, people took a lot of pain to write one, trying to convey as accurately as they were thinking or feeling. Well, everyone could not do so, for it required one to be educated enough to articulate a good presentation of thoughts and ideas. There were so many things like the syntax, salutations, greetings, compliments, beginnings and endings, the type of letter depending to whom the letter was addressed to and so on and so forth. There were formal letters and love letters, there were official letters and semi-official letters. A well written letter conveyed a lot of things and people read letters much more carefully than they read emails these days, trying to decipher the deeper meaning and sometimes emotions that went in writing those words. When it comes to the depth of communication, messages, and social media interactions of the present times come nowhere close. Those were also the times when some people especially who did not have the luxury of letter writing, preferred to exchange spoken words. For them the written words were a second choice. Spoken communication offered greater intimacy and depth as regards quality of interaction. A glance could convey what a letter could not. A discussion could be far more influential than a whole lot of books. The relation between two people had a certain depth, which lately is becoming rare as a growing number of people spend more and more time stooping over their smartphones — all in the futility of searching for meaningful interactions.

Then came telephones. Like most things new, a telephone in those early days was sort of a status symbol, for only the most influential could get one. The common man went to public booths to make calls. The requirement of letter-writing reduced considerably as people felt that words spoken into the microphone of the telephone allowed a greater exchange of information between two people than letter writing ever allowed. This was the beginning of people preferring quantity over quality of communication. Using telephones, one could still catch the emotions of the other person which could very easily be missed out in a letter, especially the ones written formally. This possibility existed even if the skill of letter-writing was considerably enhanced. The telephone continued to remain a status symbol, till it became a piece of common household equipment in most middle-income and upper-income homes. I remember in those days one had to wait for one’s turn to get into the telephone booth to talk to family and friends. Sometimes it was a long wait, as the telephone had not reached every home or public place. But one waited, for it felt more satisfying to make calls to wish birthdays and anniversaries. Sound is great in strengthening human connections — there is a reason why we are able to identify different people by their voices. It was also an efficient means of communication. The sharing of information to and fro was as good as one-to-one communication people had. As telephones penetrated human societies, people became less dependent on letter writing and this method of communicating started to fade rapidly.

The importance of the telephone gradually shifted away to the much smaller and much more convenient cell phone. This marked the beginning of the time when you carried your means of communication with you wherever you went. It also ensured that you were available all the time and at all the places where the network was available. It was mighty fashionable to flash your Motorola handsets to show that you were upward mobile. This also marked the beginning of the post-modern era of being connected yet disconnected. It was so gradual a change that people did not realise that they were falling into the trap of becoming insulated. Meeting other people was relegated to making calls or messages. It was no longer considered an important activity, some even felt that meeting other people was a waste of time! People were becoming too busy to socialise the way they did a few decades back. Doing things was more important and relevant than ‘wasting’ time meeting people. Friends and often family members got neglected, they themselves got lost to being disconnected while remaining connected through cell phones and all the bells and whistles that technology had to offer.

The availability of the Internet brought about major changes in the way we interact with other people. It remained sane, at least for the older folks who were more used to writing letters, as long as people still interacted using emails. It lasted a very short time though. But it still had a personal touch of the earlier times when people wrote letters. It also had the convenience of not having to know those varied formats for writing different types of letters. The old system of sending letters came to be referred to as ‘snail mail’, a lot of people initially would have felt that it was a derogatory term, especially those who were still used to sending letters or had spent considerable energy in mastering the art of letter-writing. Emailing ensured that there is nothing known as The Art Of Writing Letters. You just emailed, as long as it conveyed the meaning and the essence of your thoughts. In fact email apart from being the watershed for being disconnected while being connected, also fuelled the downfall of the idea of ‘the right way to write letters.

The cell phone also gave an opportunity for people to send small written messages. It was used and still is being used as a means of communicating both for the purpose of business and for meeting social needs. In fact, the SMS craze had brought in the idea of SMSese, a language created by teenagers and propagated by those who wanted to be known as upwardly mobile as the language of the future. It would prove to be irrelevant and seen as something obnoxious in social interactions. Some traces can still be seen on platforms like Twitter though. If you did not understand all those funny symbols and wonky terminology then you were not keeping up. It was funny to see the young teaching the old how to communicate, I can imagine the annoyance of my English teacher when she is told that “b4” and “before” mean the same thing!

Consequently, first, the cell phones which are now called feature phones were replaced by smartphones. A smartphone allowed all types of calls — voice calls, emails, short messages, conference calls, video calls, interactive broadcasts and almost every means of interacting that mankind has known except one-on-one physical meetings. Almost all of humanity who can afford a smartphone has since been drooling over the way they can communicate from sending emails and text messages to remaining in touch through calls and video calls. It is a common site to see people staring into a piece of glass which throws up different sounds and light when touched to create images and sounds. It is actually amazing what a piece of glass with some circuitry baked into it can do. It has made its creator a slave of one’s creation. It can keep an average person engrossed to any extent — from working to banking, from calling to buying groceries; listening to songs and watching movies to researching topics, from reading news and books to staying in touch with family through video calls, from attending classes to ordering birthday gifts to friends. The possibilities are enormous. How good or bad all this is, depends on one’s skill to maintain one’s sanity and have a balanced perception of what life truly is.

Well, times are very different now compared to the days when people went out to meet other people to stay in touch. With social media and all the 24×7 connectivity, the mind remains abuzz to such an extent that it is common for people to get bored within just a few minutes. As the attention span has reduced, the ability to invent interestingness without some external stimulus from technology through smartphones and computers is becoming a rare thing. Take away the smartphone from an average person or send them to a place with no internet connectivity and most people would be less creative than a bored monkey in a small cage in a zoo. A lot is lost, as humans have made a lot of progress. Remaining in touch is taken for granted and has come to mean so much less, despite all the Social Media apps and the numerous methods of staying in touch which was unheard of a few decades back. The depth of human interactions has given way to a shallowness born from a much wider horizon of possibilities to stay in touch. The number of Facebook friends one has now matters more than actual friends. There are examples of this sense of being connected. The most common one which I often talk of is a group of friends going out for a meal at a restaurant with the aim to spend time together. It is only till the time they order what to eat, sometimes even earlier than that, before they end up pulling out their smartphones to get lost in their own respective virtual worlds, all in the name of getting together.

With the proliferation of the Internet, social media sites started blooming. Now you have a plethora of sites for different types of social networking – Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TicToc and even sites for dating like Tinder. The ‘NOW’ generation has fallen into the trap of being (dis)connected, they are confused and unsure of what to communicate. I often wonder what value lies in wishing birthdays and anniversaries and congratulations or even condolences on social media. It is only a narcissist who would look for such wishes on social media because “how much communication” matters to him or her more than the quality of communication. While it is a reasonably good way to ensure that you do not miss out on a whole lot of those important days, it is definitely not the best way to stay in touch. This is considered a dichotomy of sorts and generates a lot of debates. The debates wouldn’t die till the entire Generation X completely dies out. As regards the other attributes of the social media sites, a lot of people are like mad updating their status and giving details that no one is actually interested in really. It is all too perfunctory to be of any value. But nevertheless, the present generation of humans is generally bored, distracted, and confused about what is the true value of social interactions.

A lot of the people have taken the plunge into the abysmal depth of being connected or if I may say (dis)connected. Staying glued to the screens, with no idea of who is sitting or standing next to them, people behave like machines while remaining glued to that piece of glass searching for meaningful interaction with other humans. I have been there and have thankfully returned. Grateful that, today I am no longer prey to the fallacies of being (dis)connected as I seek human interaction.