Well, I admit it, I’m a texting addict. I text anyone, about anything, at any time, on any subject only stopping if I’m in fear of angering the recipient. Or, occasionally I’ll stop when one or more of the following threatens my little life: when my wife threatens to leave me (for a better texter with a bigger keyboard), lack of sleep, losing my job or, living in squalor. Also, I am a Facebooker (which sounds like something you’d do to someone’s face in the 60’s). Now, just when I thought I was managing my addictions, I’ve started Twittering. Tweeting was slow at first but now I live in constant fear of missing one of my followers or someone I’m following tweet (man…was that a hard sentence to put on paper).I can’t get over it, after all these years of life I have a serious addictions…
Trying to cram the meaning of life into 160 characters one text/tweet/FB comment at a time.
Texting, Twitter and Facebook are an obsession in our world that is unequalled in anything we know or understand. Pause and think for a minute, in three clicks of your handheld PDA you can convert Canadian dollars into Mauritian Rupees and, if needed, the reverse. There are over 500 million Facebook users with 50% of those using Facebook every day. A recent conference I attended was devoted entirely to the necessity of educating everyone in social media and without it we would cease to exist (life as we know it) within two years. What a daunting thought that is. I’m cashing out and moving to the eastern slope of Mt.Mckinley for a few years until this is all over. It’ll be a tough life for a while but we’ll emerge as a better and stronger race of folks (if we, in fact are lucky enough to survive). The bus leaves next Tuesday…be there or else??? Times and departure locations to follow….
Sometimes when you blog (like this one) you have to be serious and get to the point. Sometimes my posts digress into rants and, I’m probably going to do that now. Lately, I’ve received a lot of positive comments about the subjects addressed in my blogs and many have suggested that I, once in a while, comment on something else other than Osoyoos “stuff”. In all fairness, I do get less than positive comments that question my sanity, motivation and, sincerity but I am going to press-on anyway.
Harsh reality set-in over the Holiday(please note that I have carefully avoided using the word Christmas in an effort to be politically correct, and that may be fodder for future posts) season when texting with my kids and grandchildren. I realized that I wasn’t talking to them. You know what I’m talking about…that thing that happens when we position our tongue in a certain way and curve our lips in a particular fashion and words come out. I’m not an anthropologist (I sure hope this is the right word) or anything close but I believe that speech is one of the primary distinctions between us and monkeys. We’ll need divine intervention to save us if monkeys learn how to text. Texting, Twittering and FB’ing allow us to convey words to others without emotion (a key human trait) and often we add a cryptic nature to our messages so that the recipient doesn’t really know what we’re trying to say.
Recent studies provide an unbelievable statistic: We (active users) average 123 texts each day. That’s over 3000 per month. I can’t think of one thing that I do more of other than blinking and breathing and I’m not even sure about that??
So…what’s wrong with this? Well, the jury is still out on this one. Perhaps nothing is wrong with texting etc and may, in fact, encourage an individual who would otherwise not communicate to do so and that is a good thing. I would really like to hear from you, maybe you could help me and others answer the following questions:
- Is texting stifling our ability to put our thoughts on paper?
- Are we losing a key element of humanity…the ability to communicate through conversation?
- Is it possible for us to have a meaningful relationship with others by texting?
- And lastly, will monkeys ever learn to text?
So that’s my rant (I told you so). Your comments even if they are critical ones are appreciated and welcome.
