Tech-no? Tech-yes?

The gentle hum of my computer and the intermittent pulse of cars sloshing by on the wet pavement accompany my thoughts.  I’m restless, though the world it would seem, is not.   I believe my generation is on the brink of an epidemic, a social epidemic. I find myself in a world that relies on invisible threads that ties us all together, that have somehow have made us dull to the concept of real life communication.   Not the 2014 kind of communication where our thoughts and feelings are sent out into the world via keys or tapping on a glass keyboards, but the communication of days gone by, where conversations were met with invested interest and desire to truly get to know someone, discuss thoughts and ideas or share stories.   Have these gadgets that have become an added appendage created a void where this skill once was? Sitting around the dinner table with colleagues after a successful event, I was a dumbstruck at what was taking place.    Instead of opening up discussion and debate dozens of cellphones were being used to communicate across the table.   We find ourselves joking that this will be the way of communication of the future, but isn’t it already?    How often do we find out selves in the middle of a real life conversation when that little chime interrupts us mid-sentence and suddenly the virtual discussion takes precedence?

 For the first time in history our culture is relying heavily on dating websites to seam together the patches of our inability to step outside of ourselves and take the risk of living in reality.  Instead virtually we can take a less invested risk and tip toe into a shopping center of potential mates. What did love look like 50 years ago?     Before cellphones facebook and online dating barged on the scene and reshaped the look of courtship. 

For the traditionalist in me, technology has cast a shadow of doubt over my love story.  But I know the reality is that many people have discovered lasting, and meaningful relationships through this means of communication.  And thankfully, as a student who is two provinces away from the friends and family I love, the internet has made the world a smaller place.   It is just a wish, perhaps a naïve and whimsical wish that romance looked the way it did before all this gadgetry became a vital component to surviving. in the 21st century.