DISCONNECTED IN A CONNECTED WORLD

I love the Internet, I hate the Internet! It is great to so easily be able to stay in touch with people. You can speak to them in real time, you can see them on camera in real time and you can talk to them in real time. But is it real? It is so easy to stay in touch with people these days, we’ve got cheap long distance phone calls, and we’ve got cell/mobile/GSM’s so we are available 24/7 via voice or text. We can have a Blackberry or other handheld device to receive emails with us at all times. We have laptops with wireless Internet connections, we have emails on our home and office PCs and lest we forget, we even have mail yes good old-fashioned snail mail. But I find the more connected the world has become the more disconnected we have become. Ten years ago it was more of an effort to stay in touch with people. Email was still new, mobile/cell/GSM technology was not common and even ten years ago the art of letter writing had been lost. But now I can send an email, have an on-line, real-time conversation, send a text message…. how r u 2day? Lets meet l8r! ….call their cell/mobile/GSM or even pick up the telephone. Somehow though I feel as though I can lose touch more easily because less effort is involved and it is easier to forget to stay in touch. You can ignore a text message, you can let your phone calls go directly to voice mail or screen calls with call display, you can make your status show up as offline or not available on various messenger programs such as Yahoo or MSN. We can avoid or hide from those we do not wish to have contact with for the moment. Sometimes we can lose emails in our in basket or mistakenly/purposely delete it as we are afraid it is virus or an is an advert for a product guaranteed to make you a “real man in the bedroom.”

I try very hard to stay in contact with people, sometimes I think that I do it to the point of annoying people, some people would sooner forget or perhaps they just do not cherish their friends as I do. I guess for some people maintaining contact is not as important, but for me it is. Perhaps that is my burden holding on to people, but surely holding onto friendships cannot be a bad thing? So to all my friends out there, I will not forget you but if you prefer to let the memory of me fade, that is your loss. Just don’t be upset with me if occasionally I send an email, a post card, a text message or make a phone call. I will try to stay in touch with you because somehow, someplace, sometime you touched me, I feel you are worth the effort to maintain contact and someday I hope we can meet again to share a coffee or drink in a bar or café. Friendships can be cherished and saved despite distance!