Ping Pong Technology

There is no introspective anymore. There is no reflection, no remorse, and no time to think about what you’ve done or didn’t do, there isn’t even true communication anymore.

I was born in a world of growing technology, saw the cellphones evolve from odd shaped bricks into masterpieces of compact smartphones. I saw the computers transform from black and white graphics to portable little minds. I grew up in a world where it was easier to do your homework with Wikipedia than to get references from a book.

I am not saying that not being able to communicate is a good thing, it is wonderful how you can be so communicated with so many people in at the same time, and just with a single click and how you can have your job in your pocket with a Blackberry, but that has become precisely the problem.

More and more people in the western society is starting to create a dependence on all of these new technologies, it has drawn my attention that social networking and microblogging is taking over our lives, it is easy to see that someone has a Facebook Profile, a Tweeter, a Tumblr, a Flickr, many different instant messaging services, a blackberry PIN, a forum membership and many, many more to count.

When did we become so dependent? People spent hours and hours just sitting by a computer, stalking friends on Facebook, putting their lives on 140 character paragraphs, uploading blog entries, commenting on flickr photos, chatting on messenger and answering messages on their cellphones

Are we truly communicating? Are we actually transmitting some kind of valuable information? Or Are we just over exposing ourselves?

I believe we’re falling every time more and more on the ping pong communication, there isn’t actually any meditation, there is no time to retain the information and to learn from it, we just serve and hit until it gets to the other side of the court, and so on and so forth until the only thing that remains is the empty eco of the sound of the ball hitting the racquets back and forth.

Can we actually learn from life if all we do is transmit useless information instead of processing and understanding what’s going on around us?

I worry that we probably we will not be able to do so, I worry that old fashioned “let’s take a cup of coffee” gets replaced by the infinite bits of a frigid computer screen, I worry that no letter will be written with ink and sealed with a sign anymore, I worry that because of our obsession to be completely exposed and “communicated” every time, we actually stop building true communication bridges. I worry that this is turning into a world were smiles become emoticons.