If He Only Knew

 

A friend recently sent me an e-mail based on a quote from Albert Einstein. The quote was “…while we can communicate better than we ever thought we’d be able to… the cost is the end of personal human interaction!”  I don’t know when he said or wrote that but it had to be at least a half a century ago. Imagine if he saw how we can communicate today.  Einstein’s “cutting edge” technology seems like the Stone Age now. He, however, being a genius, could see where technology would someday take us.

So here we are- in sci-fi land. You can send a text message around the world in a second. You can video phone someone on a device (i-phone) that you can carry in your pocket. Remember the old Dick Tracy cartoons- he had a “video watch” and now even that doesn’t seem far away. But what of Einstein’s basic assertion? It boils down to “more is less”- the more we can use technology the less we really communicate. The rest of the e-mail went on to illustrate the point. It followed with a series of pictures of people who were sitting together but were all focused on their phones sending a text. A group of kids sat at the beach- all texting. People were “out for coffee” together but were all on the phone as they sat there. Perhaps saddest of all was a photo labeled “A day at the museum,” three young people sitting in front of a painting and, yes, they were all texting.

I appreciate technology- I am as addicted to the internet as anyone. Yes, I check my e-mail all the time and, yes, I do most of my news gathering and research on websites. Yes, I believe in the positive power of the internet. I have several websites that I use to communicate with other people. We can learn more and faster than ever before but, when we get so caught up in the new kinds of communication like Face book, Twitter, and texting what do we lose? We lose the human touch! I am very put off by people who will not talk to you on the phone but abruptly say- “send me an e-mail, no time to talk.” I don’t want to send you an e-mail- I want to hear you voice, your reactions, your emotions that mark how you understand my words. That is the essence of communicating. I like to tell you what I mean- e-mails and texting may be handy tools but I am constantly amazed about how often they can be misunderstood. Twitter? If I have something important to tell you I need more than 140 characters. If you can tell me something in that few words it probably isn’t that important.

There was a time when “communication” was a bunch of people sitting around a campfire telling stories- yes, that seems very naive now but think about it- our greatest stories, our most noble goals, our greatest aspirations, - these were first communicated face-to- face. I am not suggesting that we go back to campfires but I am reminding you that real communication comes down to one person touching another person through not only his or her ideas but by the sound of his voice and the sincerity seen in her eyes.

One last quote from Einstein- “I fear the day that technology will surpass our human interaction. The world will have a generation of idiots.”  It is that old school, old fashion interaction that allows us to pass on the wisdom we have acquired.  Let’s prove Einstein wrong- let’s make technology a tool to increase human action not a weapon to destroy it.