Friday, April 30, 2010

What 2010 has become

People of the world are too connected.  We know too much and we fear due to all of this knowledge we have about other people's lives and other parts of the world.  Everything revolves around Twitter, Facebook, texting, and media drowning our minds in affairs that aren't ours to be concerned about.  Everyone knows everyone elses business and we all crave to know more.

You can't tell me that when you get together with a friend, the latest Facebook post or text you got from so-and-so isn't the main topic of conversation.  "Oh, I saw so-and-so's pictures today...she's back with that scumbag!" Or, "Did you see so-and-so's status this morning?!"  People have become more concerned with the lives of others to really be concerned about their own.  We spend countless hours on sites like Facebook, just waiting for the latest relationship news, events, or updates on other people's lives.  It's tough to break away from.  It sucks when every picture you take, you envision as your default picture on Facebook or every cool thing you hear you want to be your next status.

The technology of today is incredible.  Medical technology has come so far as to be able to cure diseases and ailments that once took our lives years ago.  Just thirty years ago, people still died from pneumonia.  I had one of the worst cases of pneumonia in 2003 and it only lasted a few weeks with antibiotics and cold medication.  If it were just a few decades earlier, I wouldn't have survived.

I feel we aren't using the technology at hand for the good of our world.  We are using it to be selfish and fill our minds with garbage.  There is so much to learn from the internet besides status updates and profile pictures.  There are nutrition sites to give us knowledge on foods and new lifestyles.  There are sites to help you manage your time and stress.  There are sites that create the perfect workout routine for any schedule.  Do people really use this information that is thrown right in front of us?  No.  We are concerned about which football player is getting kicked out of the NBA and why eleven companies in the past six months have filed Chapter 11 and are closing their doors by the year's end.  We are not learning from any of this, people!  We are not gathering new information that could better our lives!  We are diluting the knowledge we already have with useless nonsense that, for some reason, we will remember until we are dead and buried.  But when we are lying there on our deathbeds, we won't remember the literary geniuses that we learned about in English or the great wars that transformed our country to give us this ability to grow into such a powerhouse.  No.  We'll remember that Michael Vicks was in jail for a few months for illegally fighting dogs then returned to the field only to be known as a shitty ball player that did some "hard time" in jail.  Or we'll remember the rumor that went around stating Lady Gaga had a penis and it was seen at her concert in wherever.

Our world is exposed to so much now.  Biased new stations show coverage of death and destruction worldwide, while websites provide us with latest threats of terror or natural disaster.  Why can't we go back to being naive and if things happen, we deal with it?  Instead, we are filled with this information that only scares or depresses us and it puts us in a bad frame of mind for a while but for some reason, we can't break away from the news channel that is providing this information, so when you find out the kidnapped girl you've been anxiously following was found dead in a river, your heart sinks and you wished you'd never turned that TV on.  Yes, World, it has come to this.

And now, kids are shooting up high schools and stabbing each other and committing suicide over video game moves they learned and cyber bullying and BEING TOO CONNECTED with each other. 

So why don't we shut the computers down for the day, leave the TV off, and enjoy life without worry.  Enjoy life without CNN and Facebook and tweeting.  Go outside and take pictures for the sake of enjoying a good memory.  Take a walk in a world without fear and hatred.  Go to the store without worrying who is holding a gun and ready to shoot the clerk.  Be free.  Be wild.  Be alive.

3 comments:

  1. It's sooo true! I deleted my Myspace recently and I rarely ever watch TV. The only two sites I use now are this one and my facebook and I do most of my journaling on old fashioned pen and paper. Texting is a poor means for basing a relationship as well, this generation is almost scared to pick up the phone and talk to other people! And even with the facebook thing I sooo know what you're talking about, "are you gonna post that on facebook? did you see that on facebook?" Gotta make sure you look decent in a picture someone takes because it just might end up on... Facebook!

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  2. Our society isn't using internet for it's intended purposes anymore. There are so many wonderful things we can take advantage of with this technology!

    All of my journaling is done with paper and pen, also. There is something beautiful about taking the time to decorate my journal and write my memories and thoughts down that way...it's a beautiful thing to see the way my handwriting changes with my moods and the way my thoughts flow on paper. It's a personal experience for me...I enjoy it.

    This generation is "socially retarded" according to specialists. We lack communication skills (especially the younger kids) because everything is based on texting, iming, and facebooking. It's ridiculous!

    I'm slowly pulling myself away from Facebook to use the internet to learn things of IMPORTANCE as opposed to garbage. It's a shame that this is what our generation has become...

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  3. Oh it is ridiculous how much prominence such silly things have in our lives. I'm always coming up with questions and finding them in google so I guess that would be a good thing? It's mostly psychology and health problems I look up because I'm kind of a hypochondriac, and things for school as well.

    I was doing some spring cleaning and found some of my old journals from when I was younger and it's amazing how much insight to yourself you can gain that way. There's some things you just wouldn't put in a blog, you know? They're too personal to be floating around in cyberspace.

    Also, I had a job interview a few weeks ago and I don't know it went yet, but I had handwritten a thank you note to the interviewer and the human resources person and the guy from human resources said that people almost never do it that way anymore so it was a nice touch, that people usually email to say thank you these days. I was shocked, but probably shouldn't have considering how much and how easily our world relies on electronic communication.

    It's so easy, so where is the effort?

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