Response Paper to The World is Flat, Chapters 10-15.

The World is Flat Response Paper #3

You’re looking straight ahead, hoping no one speaks to you, and you’re thinking about what you are going to do this afternoon. An elderly woman tries to stop you to ask where the bread aisle is, but you keep on walking. You look right past her, because your headphones are an excuse. You choose not to acknowledge her, because you are now in your own little world. Your own little world may be connected to someone else’s little world, but the world that is physically surrounding you no longer exists. Our technological devices have brought us ease and accessibility, but they have also pulled us down into habits we may not be too found of. In Thomas Friedman’s The World is Flat we are said to be “so accessible, we’re inaccessible” (Page 516).

With every piece of new technology, we are able to grow closer to those we never see. Yet, when you are standing next to someone in line at the grocery store or at the hair salon, it’s hard to keep up a conversation due to the fact that they are completely enveloped in their hand held devices. Thomas Friedman quotes technologist Linda Stone, “We can’t find the off switch on our devices or on ourselves. We want to wear an iPod as much to listen to our own playlists as to block out the rest of the world and protect ourselves from all that noise. We are everywhere- except where we actually are physically.”(Page 516). Everyday I see students walking around my college campus, and I am amazed at what talent my generation has when it comes to texting and walking. We have forced our reality to adapt to our technological addictions. We have trained our minds to double task and pay partial attention to whatever may be happening around us.

The lack of attention paid to the beauty, chaos, and reality around us causes me to see the downfall within our flattening world. The downfall being that instead of conversing with our families around a dinner table, our glowing screens are attracting more and more of us. Our lives are content once we are plugged in, yet to truly concentrate and focus and be without distractions, we must unplug. “I call it the “Age of Interruption,” because it really is an age of constant interruptions- unless you totally unplug.” (Page 518). Friedman comes up with a wonderful point. Our lives are being interrupted. We tell someone who is in the middle of a great story to ‘hold on one moment’ so that we can take a phone call. We ignore our homework so that we can check our Facebooks. We may even miss out on meeting the love of our life on the subway, because that new CD is more soothing to the ears than the small talk of a stranger.

I am definitely a participant in each of these things. I love listening to my iPod when I go walking, talking to my New Mexico camp friends on Facebook, and texting in between paragraphs that I’m reading for Anthropology. My technological devices have become a part of me, but at times I do think about how things were before I ever had my first computer. I listened to the stories my sister had to tell, wrote letters to my family members who live far away, and read children’s book after children’s book without having a telephone on the mind. I wonder what lives my children will live, and what their priorities will be. We are a constantly changing world with constantly changing technological advances.

For the past five years in the month of June, I have gone up to the mountains of Las Vegas, New Mexico, and I stay at a church camp for two weeks. I stayed in a valley with no cell phone service and there was not a computer or television in sight. Those are always my two favorite weeks of the year due to the fact that I have no worries. I don’t have to constantly check my phone or my email. I don’t worry about missed phone calls or text messages. My favorite TV shows are not a concern. I love being liberated and feeling as though I am living my life, and nothing is getting in the way of it. There are no interruptions. There are no annoying ringtones.

I do not think that any of our habits will change anytime soon. We may swim deeper into the abyss of technology or we may stay put. Either way, we have lost contact with those who are right next to us, even while we’ve gained access to those who are far away. Hopefully, we will find a way to see the beauty and build the potential relationships that we have pushed aside due to our love for accessibility. How ironic the whole concept is.