Old Fart or dinosaur?

I see it everywhere I go now . . . people head down . . . thumbs at the ready . . . and banging out messages to other people.  They are sitting at the bus stop, driving down the street in their cars, in planes as they travel from place to place and even in the bathroom of all places.

I walk into my restroom at the office and a guy is standing there using the urinal . . . holding on to take aim with one hand . . . and texting with the other.  What in the hell is that?  Then he goes so far to not wash his hands and leaves not missing a beat sending the next message.  And he puts that phone up to his ear with dirty hands . . . I was shocked.

I admit that I am a dinosaur when it comes to texting . . . I don't do it unless I absolutely have too and I don't want to know how to do all of those little short cuts and abbreviations.  I am a person who uses the cell phone as needed but not one who is addicted to it.  My friend Scott has OCD with his phone . . . grabbing it when it rings, vibrates, or has messages coming through.  He has to take everyone and cannot just let it go over to voicemail or sit for 5 minutes while finishing what he is doing.  It’s somewhat comical to watch.

We have come so far with technology in recent years and I get it that young people love to text as it has become the favored way to communicate by so many people.  I see it as quite the obsession at the expense of normal relationships by many who cannot stop for ten minutes to do something else.  They have forgotten what life was like before the iphone or Blackberry. 

I’m sure parents are finding out when they pay the bills the texting history of their kids.  They have to be shocked and hopefully alarmed that texting continues throughout the day, at least a couple hundred times.  There is a running conversation all day.  I have talked to several people with kids and they all tell me this is par for the course.

People lose so much of the human connection while texting as you miss those subtle clues like body language or the inflection in a voice. 

With any advance in technology we seem to lose a little of ourselves . . . and in a whisper . . . we’re gone.

Ice

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