There is something profound in how much time we spend
staring at screens. I just read we spend
ten (or was it fourteen?) hours in front of a screen every day - a glowing screen! What has happened to us?!
How we crave that modicum of information that appears on
that flat surface! How we try to
implement our will through a keyboard!
Is this a stable situation?
Can humanity endure such a radical, drastic, fundamental, and rapid
change?
There is ample evidence that we have used the screens to
help us sink into ever greater self-absorption and to promote ever greater
isolation. Certainly the political
trends accompanying the tidal wave of screens into our lives speak of a society
that has unfettered the worst of selfish human nature.
When interacting face to face - hand to hand - touch to
touch, we cannot afford to be quite so selfish or self-absorbed. For many of us who are poorly equipped for interpersonal
interaction, the screen and keyboard are too easy, too safe, too tempting.
I used to write on paper and tuck it away in a file drawer. Now I write on a screen, and tuck it away in
the Cloud. That is hardly progress.
Our screens and keyboards seduce us because we so long for
connection and acceptance. Our screens
and keyboards seduce us because we so long for power.
Will the screens and keyboards prompt the next quantum leap
in human evolution? Will the screens and
keyboards be our undoing?
I really think this is all too new and alien for us to
answer that question.
We can say that
the screens and keyboards are both mirror and window, revealing the unfiltered
condition of the human spirit. The
reflection and view is not pretty.
The power of information absorption and dissemination
through screens has utterly and completely seduced us without our even
recognizing it. The eventual impact on
what it even means to be a society, a nation, and human is probably not
predicable and would not be recognizable if we could predict it. That future impact will be determined by what
in our human nature the screens and keyboards unleash. We would do well to look through those
virtual windows, and more so, to look into those digital mirrors. Before we become the machines, before the
machines change us, perhaps we can at least glimpse what we are.
Copyright 2016 Don Ray
If this informed, inspired, motivated, or encouraged you, please pass it on.
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