GEMMA ROSE

THE INTERNET, THE FUTURE OF HUMANITY, AND A KODAK INSTAMATIC 

 

It was thinking about my dongle that did it. That, and the fact that I had just ‘Tweeted’ my brother (which sounds rather unpleasant) who was near enough to touch, just the other side of a wall, about three feet away.

 

It has to be asked, what has technology done to us? It has taken away any element of humanity like say… ooh, I don’t know? Talking to people, and replaced it with a world of moodles, tweets, blogs and widgets inhabited by a sad, wizened, sub-human species allergic to sunlight and conversation, and whose equivalent of saying hello is to press ctrl, alt, delete. These days you don’t talk, you type.

 

I think most people who live in the world where you can look at someone without the aid of a webcam would agree that the best way to indulge in social interaction with another human being is to sit in Starbucks for hours on end, in big comfy chairs with a frapacino and a skinny latte having a catch up with friends, face-to-face. None of this iChat business which involves a webcam and microphone acting as a poor substitute for the hot drinks and the comfy chair.

 

And besides, where would Starbucks be without the potential couples that accidently meet at the shopping centre and decide to go for coffee. Romance would certainly wither and die if every flirtatious comment had to be typed, spell checked and passed on courtesy of Mr Microsoft.

 

If proof were needed of the disadvantages of electronic communication, one would only have to ask Messrs Cole and Kay. Perhaps Ashley would still be married to the delectable Cheryl had he had gone as low as to taking photos of his, erm, anatomy on his Kodak instamatic, popping down to Boots to drop the film off for developing, waiting three days for it to come back and then writing a covering letter, enclosing the photographs, which he then sent on to any Page 3 girl who happened to be handy.

 

Vernon Kay too, might have found things turning out slightly differently if instead of texting, he had to write a letter and was reduced to asking Tess: “You don’t happen to have a stamp do you, love?”

 

Internet companies are even considering of introducing a sobriety test so that drunken, late night emails simply cannot be sent. In more normal contact however everybody knows and makes allowances for the fact you are drunk when you appear myopically at a total stranger in the taxi rank as the club closes saying ‘Do you know what? You’re lovely you are”

 

What has gone before is trivial compared to the sudden cold feeling that envelopes you, and the yelp of fear that escapes your lips when you realise you have pressed ‘reply all’ when sending off a rude comment. For evidence of this I am indebted to my friend Katie who on receiving a slightly pointed email from a supplier which had been CC’d to her boss described the supplier as a ‘plonker who wouldn’t know his a… from his e… if it had been shown to him personally by Steven Hawkins’. She unfortunately had clicked ‘reply all’ and had to spend the rest of the afternoon explaining her mistake and fearing the loss of the largest contract the company had ever had. The good news is, Katie is now off the valium and her therapist says she made be allowed contact with her computer again before the end of the year.

 

Before anyone forms the opinion that I am a technophobe or an electronic dinosaur, I do have to concede that emails, the internet and Facebook are incredibly valued ways to keep in touch with people and will inevitably play a major role in the lives of young people anywhere on the planet as the 21st centaury develops. Communication is cheap, immediate and transcends boundaries of nationality, locality, religion and culture. How else could a young Muslim woman in Iraq exchange thoughts, ideas and fears with a young woman in America?

 

The true point of everything that I have said in the piece is that electronic communication, the Internet and all it’s offspring are a tool designed to help interaction and like any tool we must be sensible in how we use it. If ever we allow the tool to dictate our actions, ideologies and sensibilities – we are lost.

 

Long live all aspects of electronic communication provided sensible, sensitive, caring human beings govern it.