Essay: Technology and I

Technology and I

Mark Burton, Friday March 8th, 12:15 P.M.

As technology continues to blaze a trail, having changed dramatically within the past 20 to 30 years, the advent of cell phones, the internet, text messaging and answering machines have all had a profound impact on communication. In particular, I will speak of my own experiences in communication and how these devices have had a hand in shaping my life and my words.

When I was very young (being born in 1983), the internet did not exist just yet, nor were cell phones widespread for the early part of my life. Television, radio and regular (corded!) house phones were the way of communication through technology. Even in those days, answering machines had come about and there was a certain awkward politeness one always learned to address them in. This unconnected speech, with no guarantee of a listener, has carried over into the voicemail of today and I feel there is a certain art and etiquette involved with every new form of communication. In this case, a concise, meaningful message, with perhaps a dash of humor for our closer friends and family, is a well-regarded message. A longer message sometimes becomes annoying, even if the listener would have gladly waited on the message had it been in person.

Radio and television have also had their impact on my communication, giving me either a common ground or a lack of it in my efforts to have meaningful conversations. Personally, I've sworn off television for the past three or so years, and I'm beginning to notice this void in conversation when I really don't know what T.V. show is being discussed, or perhaps have never even heard of it. This leads me to draw the speaker back towards older T.V. shows I'm familiar with, or perhaps to attempt to change the subject at a timely interval. Failing that, I may lose interest in what is being said (unless it sounds like a rare, worthwhile show to watch, at least by description) and wander in my own thoughts. Radio is similar, but with less impact. Few people will fault you for not having heard a given show by Bob and Tom or Terry Miners, but they might just look at you incredulously if you tell them you've never seen an episode of "Lost" or something more recent I couldn't even name.

The telephone actually didn't play a large role in my communication until I was getting into middle school. In the early part of my life I was rather shy about it, and my parents certainly didn't push the phone towards me too often, except perhaps to say "Hi" to a distant relative or family friend. In my childhood, I just simply talked to people in the usual way to express myself. In middle school and later years, I began being more social with friends that I couldn't always meet face-to-face, and thus began spending more and more time on the telephone. In fact, there used to be times I would talk for hours and hours on the phone, but interestly I find that I haven't had one of those marathon talks (at least, on the phone) in years. I think my ability to drive began undercutting the need to have such lengthy talks that weren't in person. Now, the phone serves as a staging area for getting together with my friends, a preliminary talking ground which, strangely similar to answering machines, is beginning to become a place for conciseness and short talks, unless it is established that the call was made "just to talk." Honestly, I hadn't thought much about that aspect of it until I started writing this essay.

The internet wasn't a huge step for my communication in regards to e-mail, it simply made letter-writing less of a hassle. Much as I love to write, I actually don't correspond with many people, and not regularly for certain. No, it was text messaging that has had a profound impact on my communication, as I am a writer. I am the one who speaks in complete sentences even on completely informal chat with friends and in chat rooms (which I no longer visit). Even though I rarely ever participate in cell phone text chat (I just can't stand the lack of a keyboard), still the text craze has given me strange insights into communication. In chat, I don't have to suffer all the usual fallacies that can befall one in actual speech. I can shape myself into whatever entity I prefer at the moment, even becoming cool and witty if I so choose. It's easy for me to make a good impression in text chat, as I'm in my arena, my primary mode of expression, and it's happening nearly in real time. Little annoyances, such as someone responding to an earlier message after you've just sent a new one, can be glossed over for me compared to the charisma I wield in this format. Sadly, I've found once or twice that someone I then try to talk to in real life after only having chatted with is just not the same. I can't keep up my charm in the face of nervousness and a real voice, or even an entire face and body language to encounter. In text chat, I become "The Dude," whilst in real life I'm just awkward and doubtful.

As for how technology has truly affected my personal relationships with friends, family, and romantic interests, I have a few thoughts. In regards to my family, it has altered those relations very little. We can keep in touch in multiple ways, but the ones I live with I see constantly anyway, and the ones I don't see constantly I don't really keep in touch with. Technology steps in a bit more with regards to my friends and romantic interests, though. I talk with my friends on the phone all the time, now mostly in brief bursts of communicating a few ideas and planning events, with the occasional longer talk. It simplifies and speeds up the communication process considerably. Text also has its place among us, as there is a chat feature on a website we all use to stay in touch on (www.rumfish.net) that we made ourselves. For that matter, the website has a wiki and a forum as well, which are yet more means of technological communication. Most of these latter forms of communication, along with e-mail, are considered acceptable when it's too late or inappropriate for a phone call. There isn't such a rush to communicate something certain or concise in these areas, and longer pauses of silence are acceptable, even longer than are acceptable in speech. I would say technology has mostly been positive, but for a few drawbacks. One seems to be that we find ourselves more often struggling to communicate quickly and "get to the point" when perhaps we should be taking our time and staying thoughtful. Another is the affect technology has had on my romantic relationships.

Awkward as I am in real life, it's only there that I ever reach the point of feeling comfortable with someone in an intimate relationship. Phone calls keep me on pins and needles, perhaps because I can't read body language and it gives me one more way to misinterpret what she's saying. Text can sometimes be even worse for that reason. As I've said before, I can be whatever I want in text messaging, but that doesn't mean she and I are finding out how we'd actually react in real life. It takes careful and serious text messages to even begin to convey those sorts of interactions and feelings, and text is a realm where lighthearted chatter seems to reign. The worst by far, though, has been e-mail. Without any real-time interaction to back it, I'm left to my own devices and insecurities, such that by the time the letter gets written, it's warped with no input except perhaps a few lines from her previous letter to go by that can easily be misinterpreted. How any relationship ever survived by letter-writing is beyond my comprehension. Perhaps I've just had a bad experience though, and it's coloring my expectations. The girl I wrote to wasn't an avid reader or writer, and so she may have simply suffered in trying to use that format to speak with me. It could also be that it simply wasn't meant to be for that particular relationship, so perhaps I shouldn't blame the technology used to create it.

As my final note, I suppose it's worth mentioning that I wrote all of this on a computer and you will be recieving it by e-mail, Mrs. Foxworth (a departure from normal essay-writing to include your name perhaps; I've always worked outside of the box). So tell me, does this seem more like an essay, or more like an e-mail? And do you believe the media I've used to create it affected that outcome? As for myself, I'll have to reserve judgment on the subject and merely say that anytime I talk about myself, the message ends up becoming personal. Technology has definitely affected my communication; as for all the convolutions and permutations of that change, I doubt anyone will be able to track them all as our developments may well have begun exceeding our ability to adapt to them.

(FOOTNOTE: It does not appear to be possible to save double-spaced lines in Notepad, nor have I been successful in attempting to change the font at various points in the text. As such, please don't penalize me for the text being in the form it reaches you in, such as it is.  If it is somehow shorter than two pages, I'm sure that double-spacing it would bring the paper to the desired length, and I would certainly have made the title at least, if not the author line, a larger font.)

(footnote's footnote for MySpace: Also, I just had to go through and delete the line changes from notepad to format this for MySpace, which was annoying. Also, does anyone think that my recent reading of Lovecraft has given me a temporary antiquarian baroque to my prose?  For that matter, how many of you have even read Lovecraft, or even read this blog?  Questions, questions...)