If there is to be one lasting impact of the digital age, it will be to firmly and completely separate us from each other.
The process has already begun, and barring cataclysmic system failure, I can't see anyone stopping it.
America is a land of subcultures, and there's nothing wrong with that, but those subcultures are drifting further and further away from each other, even as we become closer within our little groups.
For instance: My parents speak of the days before widespread air conditioning. There were months, they said, when it would get so hot that people would be unable to sleep at night. Instead, they would go out, sit on their porches and talk to each other. By this story, we must assume that they knew their neighbors and that their neighbors knew them - or were at least willing to get to know them.
When I was younger and wanted to play during the summer, I would go outside and see who else in the neighborhood was playing. The other kids weren't necessarily a lot like me, didn't share the interests I had, but we mixed together all the same.
I didn't even notice when things subtly and permanently shifted over to instant messaging and cellular phones - not until the changes had already come and gone, that is.
It might sound ridiculous to laud the days of going out and making friends face-to-face in the age of the Internet, when finding people who share your interests is just a forum away ... but I suppose that's the problem. How many of you know who your neighbors are? Especially those of you with houses in town or apartments? My guess would be very few of you, because we don't do that anymore, or if we do, it's very rare.
Internet access, palm-top computers and one-touch cellular phones are amazing inventions, but they also mean we don't go looking for people. Why should we? We can contact people we know we like, any time we want.
I live in a large apartment complex, and I know perhaps four people who don't live with me. All four are people I knew before moving here. Is it possible that if I went around and was social - said hello to passing strangers and made conversation - I might find other people in the apartment complex I could get to know? Almost certainly. But I won't, because that's not the way things work anymore.
I can't guess what the long-range implications of this weird communication trend will be. Perhaps I'm merely paranoid, and the digital revolution will serve to bring us all closer together one of these days. Maybe. But something about the whole affair worries me.
Subcultures need to have some sort of tie-in to the rest of the world. The way things are going, those ties are becoming less and less important. It's as though we're disconnecting from reality - and from each other - step by step.
We can only wait and see what changes the next generation brings.
Write to Jonathan at
tenement_cellar@msn.com
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