"Oh The Humanity!"

This phrase was uttered in 1937 by Herbert Morrison after the Hindenburg disaster. This morning, I once again contemplate how a phrase from many years ago has context in our age of electronics and virtual life.

It may seem like an odd thing for someone who is so immersed in technology to say, but sometimes I wonder if the technology has reduced our humanity to a large degree.

As a software developer, technology will always be in my life, and certainly, I would find it very hard to survive on a desert island without my technology, but I will admit there are times when I yearn for a simpler existence.

Certainly, technology is a wonderful thing and it was has drastically improved our lives in so many ways. I would lost without my google and being able to quickly look up whatever it is that I’m looking for, but by the same token, I feel that it can also lead to a need of instant gratification.

Growing up, I was a big Star Trek fan, and I always loved “The Borg”. For those of you that did not follow the series, “The Borg” was a race whose mission was to assimilate others and add their consciousness to the collective. Every member of this collective was permanently “attached” to each other’s thoughts and there was no individual in the collective.

To an extent, sometimes I wonder if sometimes our technology is similar in this respect. For many months, I belonged to Twitter, and I had my followers and those that I followed. I would bombard my subscribers with instant updates with how I was doing and what I was feeling at the moment.

My Twitter existence ended a few months ago. I was in the hospital for a week in May. Upon my release from my hospital, I happened to look back at my Twitter feed and I felt shocked that I had “tweeted” (made a Twitter post) while in the hospital. Do I really need to broadcast my health to virtual strangers? What benefit do I get from using Twitter other than feeling smug when someone new follows me? None that I can see and this is one of the reasons why I no longer tweet.

Another reason why I question this use and abuse of technology is because of a wonderful woman who came into my life a few months ago. She has made some valid points about the harm that technology can bring and to a large extent she’s right.

How many of us use Twitter and Facebook at work? Why does this technology compel us to think that we always need to be connected in some manner? Yes, text messaging is great, but do we always need to instantly get a hold of someone? Why does this replace actually picking up the phone and calling them? A case in point, the other day, and my daughter “needed” to go on to the computer to talk to her friend on MSN. She had used up her time for the evening and I did not allow her to. A big temper tantrum later, no success at being able to go online so she grumbled as she went into her room and picked up the phone and gave her friend a call. Was that really so hard?

Perhaps, I’ll be tarred and feathered for talking like this, but I really wonder if we are doing our children a disservice by having them always hooked up and virtual. Is it just me, or do kids not play outside as much now? Mostly, they seem to be online, either on an instant messenging medium of some type or perhaps playing with “friends” online. At least when you’re outside playing with them – you can actually see who they really are – not who they are portraying ourselves as.

I shudder to think at what life will be like for my grand-children. Will all of the good that technology brings to our lives (and there is plenty of good – some of which I’ll cover in the next article) outweigh the damage that it does to our social fabric?

I’ll be the first to admit that I have been guilty of using technology too much in the past. I’ve relied on it too much and there are plenty of times that I have forgotten about the human touch. I’ll even admit that sometimes I’m so lazy that I’ll text one of my kids as they are in a different room! I’ll never totally discard technology in my life. I’d make a lousy hermit living in the wilds and if I can’t order a pizza online then I’d be lost. But I am giving serious consideration to the quality of my life and asking myself if technology is helping or hurting it.

Where is the humanity now – indeed, a question worth asking.

And now – something new - _____ for this issue…

Quick tip for this issue – With Google, one can type in define: term to do a search on the Internet for the definition of the term.

Term for this issue – ROM stands for Read Only Memory. This is the memory that is permanent in your computer. The ROM consists of a series of programs that tell the computer how to be a computer. How to load Windows, how to display information on the monitor, how to read from a DVD or write to a CD.

Website for this issue – Internet Movie Database www.imdb.com is one of my favourite entertainment related websites. Virtually anything that you want to know about a movie can be found here.