Technology - Friend or Foe?

Technology has changed our lives beyond our wildest imagination. Has it made our lives easier? Well that is debatable! Has it made our lives simpler? Definitely not. Yes, you can pay your bills at midnight, you can go shopping anywhere in the world at any time of the day, you can collect work emails long after the office has closed. We watch catastrophic events unfold before our eyes, we connect with our family and friends no matter where in the world they be, and we have more immediate knowledge of the world and its environment than ever before. However, for how convenient technology can be it definitely has not made life more simple.

Everywhere you go, people have their little ear buds in - isolated in their cocoon of music, be they running, studying, commuting and even swimming (heaven forbid). Yes, it means you don't have to say hello to the bothersome person coming the other way but hey, they might actually end up being your best friend, your wife, your husband, or your lover. Everyone's eyes are glued to a screen, no matter where they are - at the footy, at a restaurant, at a nightclub, in the school playground, on a pedestrian crossing, just about anywhere. What is it they say about the bacterial contamination of the screen of the smart phone? It is dirtier than the toilet bowl, from texting and using social media while otherwise occupied. That aside, where has the art of interpersonal conversation gone? Tho there is one advantage - it's sure as hell a lot easier to tell someone to bugger off via Facebook or Twitter. Even the humble text removes the angst in telling someone to get lost.

Everything we do today can be done online. Make your life simple they say! And yes, it is simple once you learn to weave your way through the upselling, the Paypals, the likes and the hashtags. It is simple till something goes wrong. Then the nightmare begins. You email they say! And yes you email - but on-one answers. Too bad if you are hanging by your fingernails over some precipice! Then you try to ring someone! OMG!!!!!!!!!!

Recently, a friend was trying to check the status of his visa before heading off overseas. It is simple they say! Just check online! Fine but what if the website refuses to divulge the information and tells you that you require assistance and to ring this number. Oh crap! It is now 7.30pm, so we have to wait till 9am the following day. That is ok, we can cope with that. At precisely 9.00am we ring the haloed number - you guessed it we were placed in a queue. Over 45mins later (I was bold enough to whipper snipper the lawn in this time) we have an operator. I explained to her our problem, and that I was speaking on behalf of my friend who is deaf. Her first response was that she had to speak to my friend. I said 'How are you going to do that? He is deaf. He cannot hear you.' To which she replied 'Well I cannot speak to anyone else.' I do not know the intelligence of some people employed by the Department of Immigration but my reply was then 'What part of fucking deaf do you not understand?' She then became very defensive, and my dear friend is in the background shouting 'I am deaf. I am deaf.' In all the hullaballoo the call was disconnected and we had to start again.

We finally managed to sort the problem at about 1.30pm, a total of 4.5hrs of being places in a queue listening to inane messages of how important our call was!!!! Made me long for the day when we simply rang a number and someone answered 'Good Morning, how can I help you?' With the empowerment of technology has come an enormous dis-empowerment when you need some help or answers. By the time you get past the computer generated interrogation to be placed in a queue for however long, to be finally answered by someone who can hardly speak English, you are ready to reach down the phone and grab someone by the throat! These call centers now rule our lives - from calling the local police, to making a complaint about a bill, to ordering pizza, almost every single call now begins with a recorded message. 

There is no doubt we can never return to the 'good old days' of being totally disconnected. I for one am addicted to my smart phone and feel quite lost if I have left it at home. We use social media to post touchy feely ramblings, to post memes that make us laugh, to help find missing pets and family. However, the human touch and spirit are certainly being lost  with our ever increasing dependance on technology as an actual means of communication. I fear our 'visible conscience' no longer works when we are not connected face to face, or ear to ear, and so it is easy for the vitriol to roll and then simply press 'Post'. There is no fear of consequences of how the recipient might feel and it becomes a free for all barrage of abuse.

So lets embrace our technology and use it to make our lives easier - oops I have bills to pay tonite!! But let us also not forget our human spirit and not treat people simply as a number in a queue. If a massive solar flare causes failure of our telecommunications network, one day you might actually have to speak to someone and Heaven forbid, you may have forgotten how!