Fantastic Machines

I had an interesting conversation with another "pre-digital era" human being today and it felt like I was part of an exclusive club. But that conversation did get me to ponder the two worlds I straddle – digital and analog.

I have watched people from my generation embrace technology as the new God but others are frightened and confused by it. I am somewhere in-between. However I think we need to watch how we embrace these changes with caution. We are very confident in our abilities to create and manipulate this digital world but as we focus so heavily on our virtual reality are we loosing touch with REALity?

People that are growing up in a completely electronic age may be loosing the ability to communicate with human beings face to face as they text, blog, and live their lives online. It is a very good time for the emotionally dysfunctional – they never need to show their faces in the real world. But what about the subtleties of reading human expression and body language? I think the current generation may be more awkward with these skills that mine but I would have to test that theory further.

What makes us human is in direct opposition to the digital age. Human is using instinct instead of logic, its being creative and taking an out-of-the-box approach to a problem, its hearing all the sounds in the music as one, it is "knowing" without proof that there is a higher power. I have to wonder how are we going to integrate our humanity and our current love affair with technology?

Nature is suffering because of our disconnect from our need for nature. We can't connect the idea that the food we eat needs to be grown, or raised, or slaughtered, or watered. We can't seem to connect the idea that the water we drink has to come from the clouds first before everything else. We are not fully understanding that technology will not grow our food, build our houses, create water, or life. It can only assist.

So I have to ask... are we in danger of destroying ourselves for worshiping this false God? Maybe it wasn't so bad when I had use my finger to arduously dial that rotary phone or I only had three TV channels. With all this information has come misinformation and a responsibility to think more about the truth. Am I am willing to watch the fall of humanity rather than give up my MAC laptop and my Blackberry? Hmmmm…