The Detriment of Current Trends in Communications Technologies

Prompts:

• Has technology ever inconvenienced you or hurt you? Maybe technology got in your way, slowed you down or even literally hurt you? Have you seen technology have a negative impact on society?
• How would your life have been different if you'd grown up 20 years earlier? How would you interact with others? Do you think your relationships then would differ from your present relationships? Which time period would you prefer and why?                                                                   

The following blog is a combination of both of the listed prompts.

I often wish that I had been born into an earlier generation that the one that I actually came to be grouped into. I wonder how my life would be different had I been born around 30 years earlier

—how, if this had indeed become a reality, I would view this world and interact with its human inhabitants. I certainly was meant to be born in a different era: I enjoy older music, as illustrated by my preference for rock n' roll, and I have developed a dislike for modern communications technologies, such as Facebook, Twitter, and even cell phones (when they are used for text messaging). My distaste of these technologies originates from the fact that I just cannot see why they (Facebook, Twitter, text messaging, etc.) are so highly regarded, and why they have taken priority over various other technologies that are, in my opinion, more useful and beneficial to humanity as a whole including medical, energy/power, transportation, manufacturing/industrial, and engineering technologies. While I admit communication is necessary for the survival and continuation of modern, Western societies, and that many basic communication inventions—language, paper, cell phones, and email—are essential to effective communication, certain other recent inventions like Facebook and other social networking sites, in addition to text messaging, have detracted from the value that people in past generations placed on traditional, more personal forms of communication. 

In the 50s, for example, the Internet was an idea that had been only slightly conceived of by a handful of visionaries and futurists at the time. In that bygone era, communication between people was more personal in a sense. Since people did not have access to text messaging, email, Facebook, Twitter, and other such social networking sites, communication was mostly conducted through verbal speech, and of course through nonverbal body language. Although phones somewhat diminished the experience of personal communication, such as a face-to-face conversation between two people, communication by telephone was nevertheless a far more intimate type of communication than text messaging, for instance. Now, however, many people—and younger people especially—prefer to communicate with one another by text message and Facebook outside of work and school; talking to people, whether by phone or up close, is becoming increasingly less popular in modern times. Though people sill closely interact with each other, social networking sites and text messaging are coming to dominate the entire telecommunications arena. There might even come a time when communication is conducted almost entirely through nonverbal, electronic means. This future may not be so far-off and surreal, considering the social revolution that has occurred within the past few decades. 

Thus, while communication is an essential aspect to the continued survival and prosperity of the human race, communications technologies and trends in modern times have depreciated the rewarding and personal facets of conversation in place of superficial, meaningless interactions. This trend in communications technologies in recent years is representative of an increasing wider emphasis on technology for mostly entertainment purposes at the expense of practicality. People have begun to focus technology less on important issues, such as the medical, industrial, and energy management fields of technology, and more on how to create the big social, and inherently distracting, fads. While I lover technology, I do not particularly domed current directions in technological innovation, and like I have said, with technology's focus on communication and entertainment in recent years, I would prefer to have been born about 30 years ago when current progressions in technology were of the distant, however near, future.