FRANCISCO VAZQUEZ-DIAZ
THE SIGNAL
Is anyone else frustrated with technology? Surely I can’t be the only one growing impatient. I’m not the kind of person who gets frustrated with the complexity and usage of technology.
Rather, I find it embarrassing that decades ago we created a cartoon about the Jetson family who lived during 2000 in space with flying cars, but here in 2014 we are still rolling around on Earth with rubber tires. I believe technology moves at an unbelievably molasses pace in this world.
Mankind developed the technology required to travel in space 53 years ago, yet today we are using vehicles based on a concept developed 140 years ago.
Don’t you think that by now we should have the ability to send people to space for decades at a time or even colonize the moon?
How is it possible that we can dream these concepts to life for movies, but just recently we figured out how to build self-driving cars? I saw that in “Minority Report” eight years ago! Clearly the focus of our technological endeavors managed to shift.
The biggest technology companies focus all of their energy on what I keep hearing about over and over again – things like Facebook, Twitter, social apps, and outrageous hype about the latest smartphone. They seem to be focused on how to connect human beings to each other.
For some reason the leading technology companies and entrepreneurs decided to make communication and social media a priority. We are helping people who have lost touch with reality connect back to their friends and family.
It’s as if our souls have found a way to use technology to satisfy what they truly desire. If that weren’t the case, if we as humans did not have that need, we would probably have a flying car by now.
We wouldn’t have wasted so much time on Mark Zuckerburg and Steve Jobs. We would have said, “Who cares if I can FaceTime my mom from the other side the planet? I want a car that flies!”
Instead, we seem to have a desperate need to connect with other human beings and to be part of a community. Technology can be a great tool for social communication, but I believe it promotes a disheartening trend that I’ve noticed recently: social skills diminishing in exchange for technological convenience.
Why call your friend if you can send him a text? Why engage in real-world activities with friends if you can embark on a quest of epic stature and slay dragons via an online game?
When we as human beings decide to trade natural social interaction in for a modern technological substitute we are, in fact, only partially satisfying our need for each other.
We need to put down the technology and dust off our social skills so we can feed the starved part of our soul that is longing for genuine humanity.
Perhaps, when we start to take care of our need for natural human interaction, we will have that flying car. I hope it resembles a Delorean.
