Did you ever do that quintessential kid thing one day at the lake; stand in chest deep water and while holding your arm out parallel to the water spin around and let your hand bounce and skim the surface? The faster and harder you did it the more your hand slowly numbed and the dizzier you got?
I wonder if this isn’t a bit of a picture of human life in the 21st century. Moving quickly, skimming the surface, slowly numbing all the while getting more dizzy.
Communication is quicker…10 to the second power quicker. Post office-email.
Travel is quicker …. 10 to the seventh power quicker. Horse, car, jet plane.
But just those two things alone should have freed up so much more time for us to do things we really want right? Wrong-O tiny one. Wrong-O!
A micro change in technology enables something to be done faster or more efficiently. And this has an obvious benefit BUT ONLY so long as the macro environment in which the change took place remains unaffected.
So for example let’s take facebook. Post pictures so your family can see them or your close friends, shoot an inbox message to a friend or sibling and life is easier and you have saved time. BUT BUT BUT while you are doing that 4 friend requests come in from people you haven’t seen in 14 years – 17 years respectively. You have to see their pictures. And of course when you do it is one of those Holy S@&* has she ever gained weight moments, or the “my gosh has he aged, sheesh where did his hair go, or man she really picked up some wrinkles” moments. The next thing you know you are browsing their family photos and holiday pictures and 30 minutes later or 2 hours later your time saving facebook connection is a really pain in the you know what. Time saved is exponentially time lost now.
In other words the cumulative effect of such micro changes is to re-configure that macro environment, ushering in new expectations and these change the velocities and metabolism of our lives.
We are taking in more data, we are more broadly connecting, the density of life increases, but are we REALLY connecting or just skimming till we are numb?
