by Elle Kamino

Created on: June 17, 2008

Where are we really? Are we advancing, or are we hiding?

Although we live in a thriving age of technology, it seems to me that we are somehow losing just about everything that has ever really mattered all along. Have we allowed ease of communication through the Internet to overtake the importance of actually appearing personally in our relationships as humans?

E-mail along with instant messaging overtook telephone calls just as the telephone had overtaken hand-written letters and personal house calls of a not so long ago past that now seems almost unbearably obsolete. In many ways, of course, technology has made our lives simpler but I ask you now, has life become too simple? I also have to ask why in the simplicity then, do things tend to seem even more complex?

I recently, well, almost a year ago actually, had a falling-out with a family member I'd always been close to. It's because of this falling-out that I've come to realize just how much technology can but perhaps shouldn't be able to do for us. I'm sure that most people know about Facebook, it's the place to keep up with friends old and new as well as far and wide. Yes, I am a fan of the site. I have reconnected with school friends I otherwise might not have, I've even made a few new friends across the globe as well and it's been great. The problem? I've also been avoiding personal issues by keeping in touch via Facebook. By taking turns in playing a simple game of Scrabble my brother and I are each telling the other that we are still here for one another but, is it enough? I have spoken to my brother twice since our major miscommunication. We spoke once on Christmas Day and the second time was on his birthday when I called to wish him a happy one, fleeting though the phone call was. The one line we do keep open between us is the one of Facebook gaming.

I am beginning to believe that the simplicity of technology has come to overshadow what is right for my own world and can't help but to wonder if it isn't true for others as well. Because of how easy it is to hide behind a few typed alphabet letter blocks, my brother and I have settled into a far too comfortable silence. Before this Internet Age we would have had to actually work things out rather than just skim along the surface of the hurt. What I do believe for certain is that had I just picked up the phone and called him in the first place we would be far better off than we are right now. If I had just spoken my upsets to him and listened to his own instead of merely continuing to place those aforementioned letter blocks into squares on a game board we might already be back to where we had been as siblings; perhaps even a little farther along.

I know that I am not the only person who has leaned on the all-too-accessible Internet Crutch but I've come to learn that I also need to be able to stand on my own. There's a phone call that I need to go and make right now and I hope that some of you who are reading this now might see that there may just be one that you need to make, too.

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