Lately, I have the tendon to testify to it. Too many words popping off my keyboard, my keypad, texting, typing, clicking here, clicking there. What would happen if it all stopped? Would I suddenly be thrown into a world of silence? Cut off from the mainstream...friends, family?
What if you had no keyboard, or no phone even..no cell phone, that is? I think back to my first 2 days at my new job when I had no Internet access. I had no phone that synced with email, because I had no email. I had no office mate-I was alone, in a room, at a desk. And I went wild, absolutely wild!
Yet on the weekends, especially Saturday, silence is my solace. I wake up, I brew my joe, I read the newspaper..the REAL newspaper. I turn on television, and I may look for a movie to escape into while I wake up and unwind from a harried week at work. At work, I need to type, and communicate, all day long. There are emails, and schedules, and how to documents, and brochures, and budgets and grants. There are phone calls, and texts, and more emails. While all that is happening the office is a constant ebb and flow of administrative staff faxing and photocopying and shredding and sharpening. There is idle chatter and laughter; there is constant communication. I am there but I am not there...I am somewhere inside myself and with the help of my technology I am able to keep it all running smoothly, efficiently, for the most part, like a machine. But what happens when one thing stops working as it should?
All communication can break down. The efficiency with which all the parts of the machine operate is not miraculous, but it works. When something stops, you might as well pack it up and go home. How does work get done? If there is no ability to communicate electronically, there is a paralysis of the system. Just as any machine requires the system to be in fine working order, so does work. When one piece of the system stops...soon, other parts can no longer function as they should.
We have become so dependent on a system driven by bits of data traveling through pipes and tubes, a system that is central to our ability to communicate effectively..even beyond the walls of the workplace I wonder if we are losing our ability to reach out and communicate with real people, face to face? Every now and then I get this sinking feeling that perhaps this is truly where we are heading. In one sense it is insanely simple to reach out and communicate electronically with people you have not seen for months or years, even. But on the other hand, doesn't it lend a false sense of connectedness when you can send mass emails to dozens of friends, or leave electronic notes on a friend's wall? When what is really happening is you are sitting somewhere, with your machine and your keys, fingers flying and clicking, by yourself, in silence. And when you sign off or hit send or submit or save; and when you shut down or close the lid and go into hibernation, you are as you were.
There is no real communication without a face, without human interaction. There are messages, relayed. Communication requires someone to listen and someone to respond, if only with a look or a sign. How do you sign electronically? It is time to step away from the keyboard out of the darkness. It is time to go live. How do you want to communicate?
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