Sunday, February 12, 2012
I often find myself in the middle of this technological world. I struggle with trying to stay grounded and earthy and then get absorbed into the futuristic realm! I see kids playing with ipads as their parents sit back and drink coffee leaving them to the devices, on the bus everyone is engrossed in there phones like they are an extension of there forearm and if they stare long enough they might get pulled in! I fear that we are losing touch with our interactions with people. I take the bus home from work everyday and I notice that we are all plugged in to some device and chances are its an iphone. A guys phone wrang on the bus and about 10 people in front reached into there pockets to see if it was them. Do you find yourself craving to be unplugged? Do you feel you are getting pulled in? What's next? How much can we handle? I've started thinking this way after I went to my Nanny's house and she was confused with her cable service because it's all switched to digital/internet based. I realized that I can go either way, one being disconnecting and the other being growing with it. After losing my iphone a couple weeks ago I realized how brilliant the smart phone has become. I upgraded to the new iphone 4S and am blown away by what we have at our finger tips! I can talk with my sister face to face via video message, I can ask my phone how high is mount everest, I can take a picture send it to a friend in New York in seconds, check the stock market, know the weather in Dubai and be listening to the new Bjork album all at the same time. But what I cannot do is hug my sister in london, feel the sun in Dubai and taste the recipe on Jame's App. This is where technology fails and where I need to focus on the experiences in the flesh, being with the moments, seeing things for my own eyes not via pinterest or another app! I'm interested in twitter updates, blog postings and snapshots on Instagram but I do not rely on this to give me life. This is just on my mind and I felt like you would have a good perspective on this. What do you make of the smart phone? Is it as popular in Italy as it is here? How do you unplug?
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What a great topic!
ReplyDeleteFirst I will start answering your questions.
I don't really have a ''connected''' smart phone, even though I have a Blackberry I don't have the contract, therefore I can't really appreciate the power of the new devices. Although, I think I am one of the rare cases in Italy, most of my friends are slowly getting into IPhones and the connected world. I do though spend a lot of time in front of my laptop, first, because of my project, second, because I often feel the urge to check my email, facebook, our lovely blog and see what's going on in the world, and, yes, I feel pulled in.
Smartphones and especially the Apps are one of the biggest innovation of these last 10 years. IPhones are not mobile phones anymore, but platforms. Their shapes do not communicate their function, because they are not phones anymore. They can become TVs, phones, cameras, computers ... and what is happening is that their are becoming more and more ephemeral. This about the ICloud: we can actually put everything we want in a ''cloud'', something that is not in our laptops or IPads, but in the ''air'', but still we can get to them from wherever we want. I heard that soon programs won't be installed anymore, but you will be able to use them just having access to them through the internet. Do you understand what I mean? Probably our computers will become more and more ''platforms'' and screens which are able to do everything where ever we need.
Being connected has become fundamental in our society and most of people feel alone and uninformed if they cannot have access to the internet. This trend, whose destiny is to become more and more bigger and easy to have access, enables the society to be faster and faster either at work or in relationships, I don't believe we are going to slow down what's happening. What is about to happen could probably be the integration of senses in the use of these devices, but they won't ever be real. As you say, we can't taste and feel the heat, we cannot perceive dimensions and spaces, we cannot really delve in a photography, or a video of a piece of art. People should understand this. Screens are not reality and what I am afraid of is that more and more people are becoming lazy to touch with hand or see with their eyes from real because they think they ''have already seen it on the internet''.
Yesterday, I finally finished my exams and I can take some time for me. I will still check the internet, but I won't take my laptop with me every single day, I will meet my friends instead of taling to them by skype, I'll go to expositions and I'll spend more time with great professors and artists I have met this semester. We need the net to be updated and see things, but we cannot learn as well as listening to a person that express his/her passion for what he/she is doing.
It was great when I was in Paris: I could get myself lost in Paris for ours just looking around, tasting food, listening to people talks and smelling fragrances of flowers, bakeries or parfumes of beautiful lady passing by. I should go for that more often, I felt free and happy and I never felt alone because I actually living as fully as possible by unforgettable experience.
Thanks for this beautiful post.
Love you!