I recently had an awesome conversation with a few of my friends about how our generation is one obsessed with instant gratification. As I said in one of my phone posts, I have about 5 methods someone can communicate with me that all funnel into my phone, which I always have on me. So if someone sends me a message on facebook, an email, a text message, a gchat or calls me, I will know instantly. For me it’s convenient and efficient but what if I don’t really want to talk to the person who’s messaging me or heaven forbid forget to respond? Generally people are so used to an instant response that if the person they’re trying to get in contact with doesn’t respond in 10 minutes or less, something’s wrong.
What does this mean for us? The conclusion of the conversation with my buddies ended with a sentiment that we’re all growing up impatient and needy. I guess it’s true but it has certainly changed how we do other things too. For instance, I feel really connected with the news and if something disastrous were to happen I would know pretty quick – that makes me feel safe.
On 9/11 my mother had a really hard time getting in touch with my aunt, who was a flight attendant for American Airlines and possibly involved in the attack (she wasn’t, thankfully). Now let’s keep in mind that this all happened in 2001, my mother (who was teaching at the time) had to go down to the office and use the principal’s phone because it was the only one in the building that could call long distance. In 9 years almost every person walking around has a phone in their pocket that can call anywhere in the world. Crazy. I’m pretty sure that if something of the magnitude of 9/11 were to happen again the cell phone towers would be so overwhelmed that no calls would be able to go out anyway. If that were to happen all of us instant gratification creatures would FREAK. Till then…
All of this really does make you think about our culture and how it can change so quickly. I wonder if our culture shapes our technology or if it’s the other way around. Facebook has changed the lives of young people and has evolved to meet different needs and methods of communication. I remember when the news feed came out there were petitions and everyone was really upset about it, “I don’t want EVERYONE to know everything I’m doing”. Now we rely on it; we love it. I remember when I was personally upset about the news feed I sent an email to Mark Zukerberg who told me (in a form letter) to try the news feed and I’ll learn to love it, I’ll grow to not be able to live without it. It’s true. This makes me think that for the most part, we grow into our technology, instead of our technology growing around us. There seem to be products everyday that don’t catch on or don’t seem to make sense, until we use them and grow to need them.
The reason why I decided to write this whole post at all was after reading an article about how Skype is teaming up with facebook and there will be an option call people right from the news feed. This made me think of how my friends were talking about instant gratification and how soon there will be ANOTHER way for people to contact each other. I think it’s a cool idea, I think people will use it and love it but it is a little scary that there is another way to be accessible. Sometimes is nice to be out of touch, out of communication. I’m worried that we spend too much time talking to others that we forget the introspective exercise to figure out who we are independently before we decide how we fit into society.
P.S. This article by the onion seemed inappropriately appropriate.
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