Illusion of Connectivity

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Check out the picture above. Apparently if you are human, you see a spiral, one continuous, connected line. But alas, it is only an illusion. There are 9 separate circles, none of them interacting with the other. This is how I feel about social media. This is how I feel about technology today. This is how I feel about my generation. We sit in separate circles thinking that we are connected but are not. An illusion of connectivity.

A while back, my technology pusher O once again made a tempting offer to get me into the game. O, the constant supplier of free or heavily discounted technology that he is no longer using, offered me a Surface RT  + keyboard for $200. I would be propelled into the 21st century! 

If you are my age, which teeters on the ledge of 30, you probably have a smartphone. You probably have a laptop or tablet, and more often than not it seems, both. Sometimes you have multiple sets of all of these. 40% of us spend over 11 hours in front of some sort of device. We are connected to the world 24/7, but how often do you feel a connection?  

You have all the knowledge of the world in your pocket but how often do you use it for more than a distraction or proof at the dinner table that you are right (again)? All of your friends are at your fingertips, but how often do you reach out? We have six different ways to contact one person and yet, we never use them. It's just an illusion of connectivity.

Sherry Tukle elaborates at TED that even when we do bother to reach out, we do so in 140 character snippets. A half read email is half responded. A chat greeting that never gets answered, and neither party feels slighted anymore. It has become perfectly acceptable to sign off a chat service and never say goodbye to those you were conversing with. 

Let's pretend this happened in real life. I'm walking down a street and see a friend so I say, "Hi." If this were gchat (or trillian, or AIM or whatever your poison), you would not even get a "hi" back. So I stop saying hi to this friend, and sure enough they become another name on a list of contacts I never contact. 

In the increasingly rare situation where the friend does say "hi" back in real time they are usually at work, other times they are out, but either way, nobody sits down to chat anymore. It's a way to distract ourselves from the task at hand. So I get half your attention, you get half of mine. In the real world it would be like trying to have a conversation with somebody watching tv. (Side note, IRL why do restaurants encourage this kind of behavior by having roughly ONE THOUSAND big screen tv's with or without the sound blaring?) 

You'll never dig deeper than how are you? How's work? You'll never know that I'm a real human with a thousand different feelings each day. That I'm compressing my life on Facebook into thoughts and photos that portray me the best. I recently asked a friend if I should consider posting when I am lonely. Because you'll passively connect by looking at my page and I'll passively connect by looking at yours and it'll appear like we are always 100% happy. You don't need me to talk to you, you don't need me as friend - your life is perfect already! 

In this day of hyper connectivity, where I can reach a friend across the country- no globe, it's not okay to feel lonely. So you go a little crazy. When I first connected an inherited smartphone to WIFI, every minute, no every second, I wanted to touch the phone. Even if the sound was on for notifications, I thought perhaps somebody was emailing me this very second. And when it turned out nobody was, I got distracted by Facebook which was right on my home screen. Once I went down the Facebook rabbit hole, it was endless. Even if I knew there was no possibility of new status updates (because I had just checked 2 minutes before), I still opened Facebook. Then I'd open my email. Then back to Facebook. I felt this intense dissatisfaction, my entire world was at my fingertips, but nobody was actually talking to me. Actually listening to me. Actually conversing with me.  Actually responding with more than a "like."

In 140 characters, how am I suppose to convey all that I feel and do in day? Of course I'm going to edit out my struggles and challenges. Of course I'm only going to post pictures of me from the right side, with my sunglasses on, conquering the world. I'm going to snip snip snip until all that is left of me can be expressed in four letters. YOLO, head down, distracted by your phone. LIKE, because forming a sentence was too much thought. XOXO, even if we'd never touch in person.

So here it is for the world to see. My life is not perfect. Sometimes I wonder if I will still change the world. Sometimes I dislike my job. Sometimes I even dislike Fiancee. I get distracted. It can take me weeks to get a small errand accomplished. I get lazy. I am currently without wallet because I left it in a friend's car. That's right, I forget things. I get bored. I get irritated. I get petty. And yes, I get lonely too.