A Sad Man, My Friend

maderr:

30secondstocalifornia:

Can we just observe when he says “communicate their feelings and just enjoy each other’s company” what we see is people just staring on their phones. No one is interacting with another person.

Aren’t we mindless zombies already?

I’m seriously tired of the message ‘technology has made us all zombies and we don’t talk to each other anymore’. Yes, there are serious problems. Yes, there is a large amount of room for improvement.

But you know what I did before technology? You know what I did before I had a phone? 

Nothing. When I was in school I brought novels with me every day and I read them. I didn’t talk. I managed to make a few friends and only had fun with them because they forced me to do things that I hated. I don’t like parties and clubs and other stuff, every single bit of that was hell for me, because I like quiet and suck at conversation and places like that were nothing but balls of stress to me. 

If not for technology, I would still be a miserable pile of constant anxiety, afraid to break out of a routine for fear I’d do/say something wrong and stupid. I never talked or socialized and when I did muster up the nerve to speak it was always awkward or too blunt. I became known as a cold-hearted bitch who was mean to everyone, even though what I mostly did was go home and cry and call myself stupid.

Computers changed all of that for me, showed me for the first time that there were people like me. The better tech got, the more I opened up. But I still was pretty alone when not around people I knew, because I’m not a talker, not really. 

Chatting online - chat rooms, emails, lj comms, fanfiction, all of that taught me how to be social. All of that helped me be braver, made me more willing to talk to people anywhere, everywhere. It’s less overwhelming to me now to have to go into a strange room and talk to people. I don’t go deer in the headlights now when someone randomly starts talking to me. 

My phone also helps when I’m being harassed. Back when I didn’t have a phone, if the nutjobs on the bus or in the airport started harassing me, I had no choice but to endure it until it was over or try to say something or just leave and risk whatever the fuck happened next. Now? I always have my phone. I can always call and say ‘talk to me so this person leaves me alone’. I can text someone to come rescue me at the bar. I can fucking call for help at the drop of a dime if I have to. Airports are no longer a terrifying place where I will be stuck for hours with no one to talk to unless I want to risk an uncomfortable, even dangerous, situation.

Technology made me more aware of the problems and challenges that other people face. It showed me a broader world. It’s made me more patient with people, it’s made me more determined to remember that you never know what someone is going through.

If not for technology, I never would have been brave enough to try writing. I doubt I’d be an author right now. I certainly never would have met this crazy chick who was living in Vermont and was just as miserable as me. I never would have emailed her every morning and night and texted all through work and wound up with my best friend and current roommate slash business partner. 

So don’t fucking tell me that technology is turning us into zombies that don’t communicate.

And people don’t just enjoy each other? that’s such bullshit. I was at a concert just a couple days ago. The radio was playing while they waited for the show to start, and Gangnam Style came on. The entire fucking building exploded with people dancing and cheering and laughing and having a good time together for no reason more than we were all amused as fuck that song came on the radio.

I see that kind of thing happen all the time. We’ll randomly be talking about something on someone’s phone at a restaurant and the waiter will chip in because he recognizes it. I’ve shot the shit with so many people over something that was happening on someone’s phone. People I may not have talked to otherwise.

Technology is quite literally one of the main reasons I live a brighter, louder, happier life than I would have otherwise. Like goddamn hell am I a zombie.

I completely agree with this comment.

Technology allows those who previously had no voice to have greater participation in society. And this isn’t just limited to social settings, as described in this awesome comment, but also is becoming more and more applicable on a global scale. 

When governments shut down the internet to prevent people from coming together as one, that alone is a sign of how technology can be a uniting factor. 

Technology is changing the way we learn, transforming the classroom day-by-day. Teachers no longer teach facts - why should they, when facts are a button click away? Instead, they have more time to teach skills such as lateral thinking, structuring arguments, and coherent reasoning, making academia more rewarding and more intellectually stimulating.

Technology is giving people the opportunity to experience things that otherwise they would have no chance to see. I am very lucky to live within walking distance of London’s free museums and galleries. But the majority of people aren’t as privileged as me. Thanks to advances in technology, they can walk through virtual museums and galleries, and see works of art that would be inaccessible to them otherwise.

I’m going to stop there. I could go on listing the benefits of technology, how it’s beginning to make politics more democratic by making information available at our fingertips, how it’s grown into a new plane of creativity for developers and designers, how it allows people to find a place in this ever-expanding world. But it’s not necessary.

There are flaws to technology - like every step forward, something gets lost along the way. 

But I would counter those flaws with this argument.

When urban expansion started escalating rapidly at the start of the 20th Century, people flocked to these new hubs, expecting to be at the centre of mankind. Pretty soon, however, they felt lost in the mass of people, just another meaningless face in the crowd - a sensation called neurasthenia.

Technology is similar to this urban expansion, in that it brings you into contact with a vast number of people very quickly. But it has always seemed to me that technology, unlike the rapid onset of neurasthenia of the 20th Century, doesn’t just bring people together - it allows them to grow together, and form stronger bonds as a result.

(via excalibur-red)

There’s a battle outside, 
And it is ragin’.
It’ll soon shake your windows, 
And rattle your walls, 
For the times they are a-changin’. 

- Bob Dylan

See what I mean? Quality post = rare reblog.

(Source: fuckin-man-suit, via burningupastartosaygoodbye)