“It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity” -Albert Einstein
Before you were glued to your computer screen, before you used your first mobile phone, humans used a variety of methods to communicate with each other. Just imagine if you were out in the wilderness with a group of your friends. Just you and nature. No phone, no internet, and not even a compass. Imagine you wanted everyone to come back to the camp site before dark so you decide to create smoke signals to let them find their way back. When all you have is nature, the means by which you communicate suddenly become very simple… very primitive.
Societal norms and cultural values evolve and become characterised with each period of technological revolution. Technology can greatly influence our lives and relationships. We are naturally predisposed to use our minds to think, speak and interact with each other, and as a species we have the capacity to use our minds to create all sorts of tools that enhance the way we communicate.
The digital age has accelerated communication and interaction on a world wide scale. The internet is like one enormous brain, with information being pumped through it every second… Billions of thoughts and ideas just circulating in a virtual world, a continuously buzzing mind filled with mass knowledge and mass consciousness.
We sit before our computers, laptops and ipads like worshipping pilgrims. We wait for an email, we chat to the person next to us via instant messaging programs, we fuss over our social profiles and we communicate to people on the other side of the world. Even typing has become an automatic reflex which we’ve taught our fingers to do. The staccato sounds of keys punching our very thoughts onto a screen in front of us and delivering them to “the other side” is what communication in a digital age has become.
Now if you cannot fathom the idea that there may not always be a human on “the other side”, but a computer programmed to gather information and generate automatic responses then you just need to simply strip back all the layers; of the internet, of social media and telecommunication devices to understand that communication today is merely a product of man-made manipulation.
Some scientists are even anticipating human computer chips will one day act as in-built communication devices. Imagine that… There are still people around the world that don’t really about care how technology has transformed the way we communicate, but a fundamental truth is that as technology grows, we also grow. Our behaviour is shaped and influenced by our environment and it is inevitable that future generations will be accustomed to a very digitally enhanced world.
There will always be people like myself that find this all very fascinating. I’ve become accustomed to today’s methods of communication and I welcome technology with open arms… After all I created this blog to communicate to my thoughts to the world, however random they may be.
But if you look at the way in which we communicate with each other today you will see the smoke signals have faded. The exciting and somewhat frightening realisation about technological evolution is that we are no longer communicating with nature, we are communicating with machines…
