The Need to Re-Examine Human Interaction Before and After the Dawn of "WWW"

A friend of mine shared a post with me on Facebook that discussed the concept of social networks and how they seem to have created an atmosphere of being ANTI-social instead. Since we both used to work in Information Technology for over twenty years, when it was fairly new, it seemed appropriate for me to share this and encourage dialogue about the differences between our diminishing human interactions compared to the over emphasis on our digital interactions.

Here's the video he shared with me-

 This video does make some valid points, but I also believe that the audience it speaks to is a little younger than me. You see, I was born long BEFORE this surge of I.T. became so prevalent. This current form of I.T. that brought in what we now know of as the WWW entered society around 1993 when we became engaged in IRC, MIRC, Yahoo Chat, BBS, ICU, 56K dial-up, moving from mainframes to client and peer to peer networks, ISDN, then social media, and eventually smartphones. Since we lived and thrived in a world before all of this, we remember when people had to memorize phone numbers and addresses because there were no profiles on flip phones or digital mapping systems using GPS. All we had was our memory. It was common for a child to remember at least six phone numbers; home, your parents work number, another family member such as a grandmother or uncle, and at least three of your closest friends. Many of us remembered well over 20 numbers without blinking an eye. Today, it's rare that adults remember more than three...including their own phone number.

It's true that a significant segment of today's society rely on technology and treat it as a means to interact socially as if a tweet can ever replace the touch of someone's hand or a Facebook post could replace looking into the eyes of your child, face to face instead of on Face-time on a 3x6 inch digital wafer with 4 hours of battery life.

My childhood was filled with memories of chasing down ice cream trucks, playing baseball, kickball, dodge-ball, basketball, volleyball, football, and tag...OUTSIDE. As a matter of fact, if you "got in trouble" as a kid, you were restricted to staying INSIDE. This couldn't work today with all the technological toys kids now have in their bedroom. Today, you almost have to cut power to their rooms and take their digital devices in order to restrict  them.

If you wanted to listen to music, you went home and played a 45, or a 33 LP on the record player. If you wanted to watch a movie, you shared it with the rest of the family on what was often the only TV in the house, (with a wooden frame  and no remote!). YES, the audacity of having to get up and manually turn the channel would just seem ridiculous today. Back then, TV only had 3 network VHF stations (ABC,CBS, and NBC), and a few UHF channels. Heck, I remember when TV went off at night (All you'd see was a test pattern after they played the national anthem). 

So....though I (we) were techs and IT professionals "back in the day" (MCI. E-Trade, Wells Fargo, Sprint, Hewlett-Packard, At&T, Comcast, etc), we always treated technology as a TOOL,....NOT A CRUTCH. We used it as we do a wrench, a washing machine, or even money...a tool that enables us to perform a function. The objective was to accomplish a task or complete a function...NOT to view the tool as an independent source of connection or a thing of dependence like a drug (nicotine, crack, meth, alcohol. etc).

The younger generation, especially those born into this post WWW era, (World Wide Web), have never known the difference between the time before and the time after WWW. They not only tend to see Twitter and Facebook as relationship conduits with people they've never met or spoken too, they count these digital relationships and value them in the same way as they do their best friend that they have lunch with at school everyday. They don't realize that there is a difference as a result of the limits in human interaction, limits in determining feelings not spoken or typed in 128 characters or less. I can order lunch in 128 characters, but I can't begin to express love for another in a text; that requires my personal presence and a human bond beyond the limits of a laptop, tablet or WiFi connection.

This dichotomy between the world before and after WWW is very real, but not something I've ever fallen prey to because, like many of you reading this post, I existed in the world before WWW and didn't immerse myself into the world of WWW until I was in my late 20's (technology), and early 30's (the World Wide Web...WWW). So I'm safe from this affliction despite my expressing it in a LinkedIn post. Whenever someone wants to send me a memo or message to inform me of something like an appointment, a quick statement like "have a good day", or "did you get my email", or "I'll catch up to you after 5 pm"...that works for me...but if you want to engage in a conversation....I respond with "CALL ME"... or "MEET ME FOR COFFEE OR LUNCH".There simply is no substitute for human interaction.

Almost everyone born before 1972 knows this. Unfortunately, almost everyone born after 1992 usually doesn't. They have no concept of the world before WWW. They were playing Nintendo and XBox growing up when we were playing with jacks, super balls, slinkys, playing monopoly, go-fish, scrabble, catching honey bees in a mason jar, having dirt clod fights, playing army with plastic green figurines, climbing trees, having foot races in the street, building bikes out of spare parts, and making chump change by cutting grass for money, having a paper route, or selling lemonade or frozen icy cups at a makeshift stand in front of the house over a hot summer. The younger generation have no such reference to this kind of personal non technological bonding that made us tougher, more resilient, more tolerant, more caring, more creative...because you had to be back then.

Back then, you had to go to the library to check out books to read. Today, we have Kindle, tablets, phablets and smartphones.

Back then, if you were in a strange location, you go buy a map from a drug store or gas station. Today, you open Google or BING or Mapquest and use GPS on your phone to find anything, as long as you have a signal.

Back then, you watched Jack LaLanne on TV with your mom, or popped in a Jane Fonda VHS tape, pulled up your leg warmers and got to stepping, or you went to a gym and lifted with a partner, or met up at the park for hoops, or jogged the neighborhood with friends. Today, You can prop up your tablet or smartphone in the den or garage and workout out to Insanity or P90X via streaming video.

Back then, it took 10 minutes to pop real popcorn in a pot on the stove, and brought it with us as we went on movie dates to drive inns, sometimes with a few stowaways hidden in the trunk to save money. Today, we microwave popcorn in 3 minutes and watch Hulu or Netflix from the family room sofa.

Back then, you met someone at a high school dance, at work, at college, or at a club or bar...AND IT WAS NOT WEIRD TO DO SO...IN FACT...IT WAS NORMAL. Today, you have to go over an online dating profile for weeks looking for flaws, and running background checks before we start sending messages as if the online conversation will be the same as an in-person conversation; then have the nerve to be disappointed when we learn that the person we finally meet is nothing like the person YOU imagined.

Back then, we lived, shared and interacted whereas as today, we consume and use. Maybe that explains much of what we now see in the world...the alienation and tendency to make immediate assessments without taking the time or making the effort to interact.

I love technology, but there is a time and a place to unplug, especially when there are living souls all around us that do not have USB ports, or SIM card slots, but they do have the ability to determine when they are unappreciated. , They may not delete you from their phone or un-friend you. But we will miss their presence when they, the ACTUAL person, is gone.

Maybe that's what we've lost today...

The ability to let someone know how much they matter, before it no longer matters.