Beyond the obvious safety issues, why does anyone want, or need, to be talking constantly on the phone or watching movies(or texting) while driving?I hate to sound so 20th century,but what's wrong with just listening to the radio? The blessed wonders of technology are just overwhelming us.We dont control them,they control us.
We've got cellphones BlackBerrys and Kindles and iPads, and we are e-mailing and text-messaging and chatting and tweeting-i used to call it twittering until i was corrected by high school kids who patiently explained to me, as if i were the village idiot,that the correct term is tweeting.Twittering-Tweeting whatver it is,it sounds like a nervous disorder.
This is all part of what i think is one of the weirder aspects of our culture;a heightened freneticism that seems to demand that we be doing, at a minimum, two or three things every single moment of every hour that we're awake.Why is multitasking considered an admirable talent?We could just as easyily think of it as a neurotic inability to concentrate for more than three seconds.
Why do we have to check our e-mails so many times a day,or keep our ears constantly attached to our cellphones?When you watch the news on the television, there are often additional stores being scrolled across the bottom of the screen,stock market results blinking on the right of the screen,and the promos for upcoming features on the left.These extras often block significant parts of the main item we'Re supposed to be watching.
Enough already with this hyperactive behaviour,this techno--tyranny and non-stop freneticism.We need to slow down and take a deep breath.
I'm not opposed to the remarkable tecnological advances of the past several years. I dont want to go back to the typewriters and carbon papers and yellowing clips from the newspaper morgue. I just want that we should use technology like any other tool.We should control it,bending it to our human purposes.
Lets put down atleast some of these gadgets and spend a little time just being ourselves.One of the essential problems of our society is that we have a tendency, amid all the craziness that surrounds us,to lose sight of what is truly human in ourselves, and that inlcludes our own individual needs-those very special,mostly non-material that would fulfil us,give meaning to our lives,enlarge us,and enable us to more easily embrace those around us.
We need to reduce the speed limit of our lives.We need to savour the trip.Leave the cellphones at home every once in a while.Try kissing more and tweeting less .And stop talking so much.
Listen.
Other people have something to say,too.And when they dont,that glorious silence that you hear will have more to say to you than you ever imagined.That is when you will begin to hear your song.Thats when your best talks take hold,and you become really you.
No comments:
Post a Comment