by Charles Chen

Created on: March 07, 2009

What has changed our world most in the last century? Computer is likely to be the most favored answer. But what will it be if the question is like this: What has changed our world most in the last DECADE?

Maybe cell phone wins out this time. Cell phones do not come out as early as computers, but they have been developing as fast, probably even faster. We know Microsoft brought personal computer to nearly every home, which took about twenty years, while cell phone producers did this more efficiently: they just need half of that time!

Cell phones have become a necessity of life in some way and they do bring us many conveniences. However, just as we all know, everything has two sides. Cell phones have brought about a series of new problems to us, together with the profits that phone manufacturers have been showing us all the time.

Cell phones do not always seem to be that interesting all the time. If we say internet makes it easier for us to communicate, then cell phone is helping us to over-communicate. There was a time when somebody invented a kind of software called IM, and since then plenty of our time has been spent on it. And, cell phone is actually kind of IM machine that we carry anywhere we go. We don't take a computer or Macintosh with us, but taking cell phones isn't that hard, huh?

There is the "old" story like this:

I was sitting there enjoying my lunch alone, while a couple and a girl aged about sixteen sat beside me, and obviously the girl is their daughter. That was supposed to be a pleasant lunch to have a family get-together. But things did not turn out as I'd expected because the girl did not talk a single word to her parents except "okay" and "no". The girl was busy at her blackberry and she was so busy that she couldn't spare a second to talk!

Maybe the girl is texting with her friends about the party that Jim invited her to come, or maybe she was just texting with Jim. But whatever it is, she missed something that is more important in life that she should have treasured.

The story is a new one that just came out in the latest years, but we have got used to such phenomenon that it looks like an old one. We see people talking over phone on the bus, in the subway, or anywhere you can imagine. And a great number of us is spending hours every day texting with friends, while for them the most frequently used sentence is "what's that", which means we're just wasting our time saying something that is completely unnecessary.

Over-communicating is becoming part of our life, and even if we realize it, we can't get rid of it because it's rooted so deeply in our hearts. We are accessible at any time, and when we don't, anxiety comes.

On the other hand, does over-communicating result in over-connected? The answer is no.

While we are spending too much time texting or talking with someone, we're actually blocking others who are standing in front of you. That means you're closer to a few certain people at the cost of being isolated by many others. Cell phones do not bring us together; at least they do not make it in our real life.

New technologies are changing our life, and they change us too. Cell phone is great tool under proper use, but for most of us, the skill of communicate face to face is more important than those virtual ways. After all, the world we're living in is certainly not imaginary.

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