I didn’t believe that technology had any negative effects on relationships until today.
I was sitting at Starbucks, chilling out and watching the pop culture parade by my parking-lot perch. I saw so many things that really showed me the way technology is depersonalizing interaction and contact.
A man drove a large, black Nissan SUV into the parking lot and parked across from where I sat. It was a shiny new SUV – it still had a temporary license plate. After he stopped the vehicle and got out, four kids piled out with him. It seemed he was talking to them only sometimes. They all filed into Brugger’s Bagels. As they were going through the line and getting their food, one of the children, a boy, came back out to the SUV and got in. there was no sound or movement from the vehicle. Had he been sent to time-out? He really looked too old for that sort of thing.
The dad came to the large glass window after a few minutes, food and soda cup in hand. He was wearing a Bluetooth device on his ear and trying to get the attention of the son in the SUV. First he tried waving. Then he knocked on the glass window. I could see it rippling from where I sat. Finally he reached into his pocket, produced his keyes and clicked the alarm on and off again to get the kid’s attention. He pointed at the table where all the other kids were sitting. The boy got out of the vehicle and went inside to sit with everyone. They sat there for quite awhile eating their bagels or whatever. The man never took the device off his ear.
Has anyone else noticed that annoying trend of tuning one ear away from the world? I kid can be walking through the mall with their best friend and still have an earbud on one side. I wouldn’t be friends with somebody who didn’t respect me enough to listen with both their ears. That’s the same way I feel about the Bluetooth device that so many people like to wear. It’s a serious act of disrespect to those they are around in the current situation as well as whomever they are chatting with on the phone.
The next thing that happened to me was that I got a call from my mother. I had called her earlier, but she was too busy ordering food from a Mexican restaurant to talk to me at the time. When I answered the phone, she said she could talk now because she had her bluetooth on. I couldn’t understand very much of what she was saying because the device didn’t pick up her consonants very well. I guessed at most of her words, listening hard, and she was so proud that she could talk to me with no hands. She doesn’t even respect me enough to speak so I can understand her. Making me struggle to make out what she is saying is a bullyish way of gaining superior status in the conversation.
Remember when you were younger and you would call your best friend or your crush on the phone? Remember how those huge handsets felt? They had weight and depth. They made a very concrete connection between you and your buddy – nearly as strong as the friendship itself. Now what do we do? We put our best friend on speaker phone so we can get more done while we chat. We use our bluetooth device so we can multitask while we’re talking. We don’t like placing the phone to our ear.
That means we don’t even respect our friend enough to actively be physically and mentally engaged in listening to what they have to say.
As of today I believe that technology is depersonalizing in the capacity of relationships.
That brings forth the irony of the latest HP ads: “the computer is personal again.” Ah well, someone had to do it, and those ads are nicely done too.
