The most recent technologies of the digital age have revolutionized the communication needs of business and knowledge. And humanity now lives in very different ways than in the past.
During the last century, specifically in the decades of the 60's and 70's, humanity witnessed the start of technological takeoff . Same that would end up revolutionizing all existing forms of information management . And mass consumerism. The digital age and its effects on human relationships are now so obvious that they cannot be denied.
Of course, these advances have meant great achievements in many fields of human activity. However, they have also affected the way we interact with people. And with the world in general . The most remote records on the use of carrier pigeons date from ancient Greece. And they were trained to communicate to the people of the periphery, the names of the winners of the Olympic jousts.
Today only grandparents remember the time when people exchanged correspondence. Special pieces of paper could be made to order. And envelopes with our personal stamp already printed.
Concepts such as mail or transit of documents, official or personal, have been known for thousands of years. The ancient Egyptians, had a very complex system to keep faces and records of population or crop accounting. From the point of origin of the Nile, to the end of its tributaries.
For the human being, communicating has always been a social necessity. And it involves the attention of affection between people or business-related matters. And the implementation of laws and government structures.
The era of telephone communication
In the past, interpersonal communications required the lively participation between sender and receiver of the message. There were even pieces of furniture designed to store paper, envelopes and inks, called “secreter”. Letters were written by hand. And the thrill of seeing the mailman get hurt was experienced. Possibly with news of the family or of being loved.
The digital era has erased the use of paper and ordinary mail to send messages over long distances from the practical scheme.
From the invention of the telephone to the present day, the changes that the technology has registered, have been so impressive that the telephony no longer resembles anything as it was in its origins. Its effects on human relationships have definitely modified the way we see the world and the way we interconnect.
It has happened to all of us to contemplate scenes in which we see groups of people together around a table. But none speaks or interacts with the others.
If a brother or our best friend was in another country or another continent, we could raise the horn of the phone and call him to congratulate him on his birthday. The excitement of hearing the voice of that being that we care about and want, has been replaced by the text messages. Brief paragraphs full of smiling faces.
Or video games, which are the current fascination of young and old. A person can spend hours, alone, playing online with people who are in very remote countries. We do not intend to demonize neither the development of new technologies nor their implementation and use in the digital age . But perhaps we should pay more attention to correctly assess and size the importance of real human relationships and in person.
The new technologies are a great achievement of human talent and creativity. But the invitation is about not abandoning personal and emotional treatment with the people around us.
We think it is very sad that no one writes a letter or makes a phone call to someone they have not seen for a long time. Going out for coffee with friends, now means sitting three hours in front of a table, being surrounded by people, but they don't talk to each other. Unfortunately now the purpose is to see who has the most modern and expensive mobile device, or who has more followers in social networks.
The authentic and original sense of meeting with people is being lost.
We still have time to solve it. We can continue to enjoy modern technology and what is to come, without neglecting human contact, which is the basis of societies and their empathic capacity and shared emotion.
Have you thought about it?
AUTHOR: Kikio, editor in the big family hermandadblanca.org
To know more:
The signs of change: from digital mutation to analog transformation.
The digital being in cyberspace.
