Humanless
In Rushkoff’s chapter “Fact” (106), he reminds us of how we used to communicate
and exchange information with each other as a community. We no longer communicate
the same way. There is still an exchange of information between people, but it is rarely
face to face. With face to face exchanges you are more apt to tell the truth since the
person you are selling to, is right in front of the product your trying to push. On the
internet, a company rely’s on the people doing the talking. “If a company wants to
promote conversation about itself, all it really needs to do is something, anything,
significant” (115). Then let the people take it from there, but the company doesn’t get the
choice of good or bad publicity; which makes it hard for companies to be faulty, or lie.
But now we are all wrapped up on giving reviews, or posting on our wall, what we just
heard happened to Mary Sue at lunch that day.
We are loosing “Time” (28) off of our lives the more we stay connected, and
loosing who we are, being married to our devices this way. “The human nervous system
exists in the present tense. We live in a continuous “now,” and time is always passing
for us” (28). Time is always passing. The time we spend in front of our devices is more
than we think, and we are becoming more and more like our emotionless devices
everyday. We don’t go to the bazaar and chat with our neighbors; we sit in front of our
computers, emotionless, typing what we want our friends to know. There is no emotions
in blogged, texted, or e-mailed words. Our devices are biased against time, we on the
other hand need time for things, eating, sleeping, playing. But we are loosing those
things by being constantly connected, and Rushkoff says, “The results aren’t pretty.
Instead of becoming empowered and aware, we become frazzled and exhausted’ (35).
We don’t live in the now anymore.
The majority of us are so attached to our devices that we no longer live in this
“Place” (41) anymore. Rushkoff uses a popular high school student to show how we
don’t live in the present tense anymore. The fact that he uses this one student doesn’t
mean he is singling out high school students, we all are acting like this, in one way or
another. Rushkoff says, “Gina is the girl who is everywhere at once, yet-ultimately-
nowhere at all” (43). He is saying, that we are all connected together talking on our
networking sites, yet we are not conversing with the people in front of us. Everywhere
you go, you will see people with their eyes glued to a screen, cities even have a central
Wi-Fi in parks so we can all stay digitally connected. But what about our real life
connections? I have tried to make an effort to try and not be so connected; except it is
very hard since everyone I know and associate with are all tied up in this online world,
and it seems to be the only way to get anywhere with them. None of my friends like to
talk on the phone anymore, they will only text or Facebook me. Emotion is taken out of
the equation when you type or text something. You can try and portray the emotions you
are trying to get across, but it usually ends up having an opposite effect and is taken in
a different way; usually not in a good way. If we keep this going we won’t be able to talk
face to fcae anymore either.
I have heard in the hundreds of years to come we will evolve to have three
phalanges on our hands, and we will be button pushers. If we keep it up the way we are
going it doesn’t sound far fetched. We need to learn to think and keep the face to face
contact alive. Learn not to loose our selves in these timeless devices, in turn making us
exhausted from constantly being connected. And keep our real life relationships lively,
not be blind to who is sitting in front of us because we have a screen with someone else
on it. We need to keep our emotions running so we can stay alive and live your life
before you don’t have anymore life to live.
Rushkoff, Douglas. Program or Be Programmed: Ten Commands For a Digital Age. Berkeley. Soft Skull Press. 2011. 