When I picked up
my pen to write, I had no idea what to write about. My mind was as blank as a Tabular rasa, but as I sat there
thinking, my phone vibrated. It was a call from my sister. We chatted for a
while about everything and anything we could think of. After the call, an idea
came to my mind and I decided to put it down in writing. After my conversation
with my sister, I realized how, in a very few minutes, one could easily stay
connected to family and friends no matter how faraway one is, and one word came
to my mind –Technology.
Then, my mind travelled down memory lane, and I
remembered how messages were conveyed in the past. In the village setting, a
Town crier, who is seen and heard by the villagers, delivered the messages from
the palace; a child is sent to deliver messages to relatives and friends by the
parents; or the parent(s) paid a visit to the relative or friend to deliver
messages personally. In this setting, everyone knew everybody by name. Therefore,
there was that communal love and connectedness which they shared among one
another. As a little girl, my mother would send me on errands to deliver
messages to her friends, relatives and neighbours on a daily basis, and for as
many trips back and forth as she deemed necessary. Honestly, it was not as if I
enjoyed those errands…, but those back and forth errands helped us to be
connected to our relatives, friends and neighbours.
Also, I remembered the medium used in sending
messages to those who lived far away. Letters were written and posted and it
took weeks and sometimes months for these letters to travel to their
destinations. Also during wedding and birthday celebrations, invitations were
printed and given to invited guests, who in turn showed up in their ‘Sunday Sunday best’ with gifts to grace
the occasion. My mind also wandered to those days when banks used to be over-
crowded on Fridays because of the rush to get a little cash to survive the
weekend – how petty thieves and high-way robbers had a field day as they robbed
families in the ‘safety’ of their homes and business men and traders on the
high-way. I smiled when I remembered how debtors used the excuse of weekends
and public holidays to escape the payment of their debts. Then, I said to
myself ‘those days are gone…’
These days, however,
in a globalised society with accelerated rate of technological development,
there is a serious, yet not so easily noticeable, breakdown of the type of
human connection that enhances true communality. These days, a simple one
minute phone call or a text message has cut children off from playing the role
of middlemen conveying messages and connecting families and friends. Post
office boxes now house spiders and cockroaches instead of letters, as people have
found a quicker and more efficient way of sending their messages to friends and
family who live far away- through Phone calls, text messages and e-mails.
One
cannot argue successfully that the modern day technology, especially the
computerized gadgets have their advantages, but studies have shown that our
human connectedness and personal relationships suffer. With the increasing use of
mobile phones, and the craze for blackberry, i-pads and other more
sophisticated phones and gadgets, people hardly look up these days to say ‘hi’ or
respond to a greeting, as they are always hunched and deeply engrossed in
browsing and ‘pinging’. Face to face interaction is slowly phasing out as
people do not really need to see each other to converse. People also go about
plugged into their ear phones and i-pods, shutting out the world, that you can
hardly find anyone to ask for directions.
These
days, wedding and birthday invitations are sometimes sent to invited guests
through text messages. Guests may also either choose to attend if they wish or
send their ‘congratulatory messages’ through the same medium. Birthday cards
and Frames have suddenly become outdated, instead; their inscriptions are
turned into text messages that can instantly be received by the celebrant from
any part of the world. Without doubt, our connectedness to ourselves is
silently dwindling and the divide is growing even deeper.
Remember
that queue in the banks on Fridays? It’s gone. No, it’s not ‘abracadabra’, it’s
called ATM and abandoned withdrawal booklets. People are not even aware of that
renovation done in the bank three months ago, or the new cashier that was
employed three weeks ago because they hardly step into the banks these days.
With the ATM, there is no cashier to customer interaction, no weekends and no
public holidays. Imagine how disappointed debtors are now that they no longer
have any excuse not to pay their debts. Frustration has also become the order
of the day for thieves and armed robbers as there are no cash to be whisked away
because nobody keeps huge amount of money at home and travelers travel with
their ATM cards.
These days, they have resorted to ATM fraud
and internet fraud called Yahoo Yahoo
in order to survive. They sit in the comfort of their homes with their laptops
– no human contact or gun needed- and rob ‘magas’
of hug sums of money. Also, these days, people transact their businesses from
the comfort of their homes with phone calls or/and e-mails.
As
my mind went through all these scenarios, I realized that our lack of
connectedness these days is caused by our consumerism and materialism, based on
a strong capitalist system which evidently reduces connections. Then I
remembered the saying “No man is an island…” and I said to myself ‘Those days
are truly gone! I dropped my pen wondering what
the future holds for our human connectedness.
Udi
Eseoghene Juliana
BY/11A/0462
