Access for Everyone?
Some of us don’t actually possess phones with internet access or pushed email.
For the vast majority of people on this planet, acquiring the latest gadget is still out of reach due to costs. Until my brief tenure in advertising a couple of years ago, as much as I may have wanted a PDA (as they were once known), I couldn’t afford one and was therefore separated from an entire movement that has now transformed how we, as a global community, communicate and live. After my layoff from said job as corporate hustler last year, I had to relinquish my beloved Crackberry and went back to utilizing my very basic and entirely acceptable Tracphone. It wasn’t such a tragedy, but with the evolution of smartphones, I couldn’t help but feel out of the loop.
Anyone that’s involved in any shape or form in the digital world recognizes the strides that smartphones, web apps, and internet innovation are taking. What is new today will be old news within a matter weeks. In places such as India or the many countries of Africa, people are using their phones for far more than just email or bullshit web games—they pay for groceries with a swipe of the phone, for example. We use these applications to share moments, conversations, photos, data, and more. Organization of higher education often takes place only via online portals—from applying to school to registering for classes to turning in exams. Many people are only available through the online world.
Once upon a time, knowledge equaled power. Now, it is the access to knowledge that equals power. So what happens to those that don’t have the financial means to acquire that access? Are we left behind and looked upon in the same manner that the homeless or Dalit are? Throwaways? I recently invested in a Crackberry again and while it’s not the latest model, it opened up that world again for me. How do we do this for the people for whom the costs remains beyond their means? If technology is the framework of the world, how do we make it accessible to everyone?
Are we losing that sense of human connection?
Today we have all sorts of ways to keep contact with the people in our lives -both active and passive ways that no longer require that sense of human touch. Email has gradually replaced letters sent via post. The 10-Year High School Reunion has been rendered somewhat obsolete because we now have Facebook, where people update what’s going on in their lives on a daily basis –from what they ate for breakfast to what their kid threw up to whether or not they’re 1)Single, 2)Married, or 3)Looking for Random Play. You may or may not want to know what the Prom Queen is doing with her life, but she can still look you up and request to be your friend now –even if she hated you back when you were 17. Your LinkedIn profile with its list of “Connections” somehow socially dictates whether you have been successful in business or not and sometimes it acts only as an online black book for all of your professional contacts. LinkedIn is essentially your Rolodex, but online and complete with pictures.
Notes passed around class were replaced with text messaging and now, text messaging is being replaced by Twitter, the ever-expanding ecosystem of Twitter, and the world of mobile device apps such as Foursquare, where you can let the whole world know how many times you’ve been to the Pink Elephant in NYC and if you’re there right now. Even voicemail, which replaced physical answering machines what seems to be a million years ago, has been edged out via software programs such as Google Voice & Phonetag –whereby your voicemail is transcribed and sent to your email. With the increase in communication methods, the simplification of communication that has birthed unnecessary, over-communication in order to somehow make evident how small the world is becoming, to bridge the gap in communities and cultures, to decrease the digital divide that once cloaked parts of the world in darkness, I can’t help but wonder if we’ve lost sight of the whole pointed of being “connected”. If we merely spend all of our time in front of screens –whether they be our computer screens or mobile device screens- is that “I’m in like with you” lost in translation? If the only evidence of our existence is numbers and code lost in The Cloud, do we really exist at all?
Is it necessary to document every last minute of our lives? Do we really need any more proof of living that our own experience of it?
For this new generation born in the flood of new media and the change that is crushing old boundaries everyday, it should be their one mission to not only remain connected, but also to do so in manners that are genuine, sincere, and meaningful. Productivity hacks and tools all have their place, but when bigger/faster/stronger/cheaper sacrifices the soul of any activity they are nothing short of modes for addiction… Of course, who’s to say that sending out mass holiday cards via Twitter or whatever platform is available in twenty years won’t be as fulfilling?
