Disconnected

---Added in 2013 - This is the most painfully boring post, but I feel guilty outright deleting it. I recommend skipping it. Just saying. ---

Today, these are just thoughts that don't come to any real conclusions.

Just so you don't get your hopes up or anything. : )

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The most basic human interaction consists of 2 humans, within some proximity to each other, attempting to communicate verbally or with body language.

That is the closest connection. There is no middle man, tools or implements. Person to person; it is direct. If all of our senses are in tact, there are 4 mediums of information acquisition from the other- we can hear you, see you, maybe smell you, touch you. All of these are unique and provide information and shades of meaning that the others simply can't express in the same way. So there are different levels to which this interaction can deepen and transmit the greatest understanding. All of the senses are communicating something: remove any of them and that is one less aspect through which you are able to connect or commune.

Let's say that the first stage in introducing separation in communication and using a tool to connect people, chronologically, came with writing a letter, and having a third party deliver it. I then have in my hand something that was physically in my friend's hand at one point, and their words are expressed in their own distinct personal stamp and style of handwriting. I can see a visual, 1st hand expression of their personality, but not themselves.

There is a loss of 3 out of 4 mediums I would argue.

Then came telephones. I can't see you but I can hear your actual voice, though transmitted electrically (or however). I hear its inflections as you express and respond to me, and I can read a fair amount of your emotion and meaning from that. I lose sight, smell, and touch, and rely solely on hearing, but at least the voice is one of the most telling expressers.

Maybe losing 2.5 out of 4, having words themselves with the added bonus of vocal inflection.

Enter the internet. Via email, I see your words, but they are in impersonal neutral type, not in your handwriting, so I see the capital R that the computer produces, not YOU. Neither do I hear your vocal inflections. I do not see you, hear you, smell or touch you. Look at how far removed it is from the original. It is like a 3rd generation tape: one that was taped off of another that was taped off another, that was taped off of the original. The quality decreases with each step away from the original. I have very very little to go on, to actually effectively communicate with you. In place of all 4 senses, I must project in my imagination what I presume your tone to be, and the mood and intention behind these typed words before me. Quite a bit if left to conjecture, I would say! Miscommunication is rampant in this world. Everyone reading this surely has had instances in texting or email of your tone being misunderstood in what you said, or misunderstanding the other. In many cases it has been the source of high drama in relationships!

Lovely!

Isn't it wonderful the progress we've made? (excuse my sarcasm)

This is like, 3.5 out of 4 gone.

Now everyone else but me has cell phones and I'm using Skype. I can see and hear my mom on our Skype calls, but it is still very much like talking to a robot, as it is this digitally manufactured image of her and her voice. Also, since the signals are flying all over the PLANET and/or outer space, we often have a sketchy connection. I periodically can't hear her or see her or other various troubles.

Technically this should only be a solid 2 out of 4 loss (smell and touch), but combining connection difficulties and the artificiality of it all, I can only give it a weak 2 at best.

I talk to my dad on his cell phone (me on my LANDLINE - and I had to set down my WALKMAN to answer the PHONE. I know, I am such a dinosaur. Are any of you young'ins googling walkman now?) . Obviously we have conversations, but it is always much quieter than a landline call as the signal is weaker. The connection is removed yet another degree. It isn't from cord to cord across the continent, it is flying through the air harum scarum.

I've talked about this before too.

There is a great lack of quality connection and community in the world today, while quantity proliferates and overwhelms. I believe everyone is aching from it. Everyone seems to be complaining about it and the void it creates in our psyche. We frantically strive to fill it with other distractions, and saccharin substitutes for true connection, our fill-ins usually in the form of a digital reproduction of the original, the actual thing you wanted in the first place but choose not to, or can't have for whatever million potential reasons. Social networking sites like facebook attempt to fill the space of real relationships and people text instead of talk, and live imaginary lives online or in video games instead of in reality with other humans. Addictions to these outlets are as common as houseflies these days. There's got to be a reason for that! It's trying to fill some legitimate, real need we have.

So why don't we just go to the source? I have so many questions and theories about the larger impact of these changes. I think are a great many that we won't see until it's too late. Hindsight will be, as it always is, the perfect vision interpreter of what happened right under our noses, unbeknownst to us. I do fear that the further we get away from the original, the harder it is to go back. It won't be automatic and easy, cause it won't be the norm, we won't be accustomed to it, so it will have awkwardness added to further dissuade us.

Someone else is raising many of the same questions and concerns, I later come to find.

There's way more than enough blather on that topic for today. Thanks for listening!

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