These are modern times, but we are spending more time than ever on something we've been doing for a million years. Walk around any high school or college campus and you'll hear some of the same things that we did.
Facebook. Twitter. Texting. E-mail. Hand-written letters. Wait, one of these doesn't belong.
Alright, the methods are changing, but the premise certainly is not. We're humans, and we love to communicate. These new tools have us more hooked than ever.
Americans sent 363 billion text messages in 2007, over a trillion in 2008, and this year, well, maybe we should just stop counting.
One Drake University student told me, "I do like around 9,000 a month."
Kids will be kids, but the rest of us are in on the revolution, too. My grandmother has a Facebook page. She and 200 million others do. Like 'em or not, the modern methods have taken over.
"It's one of those things where I could kick and scream if I wanted to, but the train's left the station. We can't go back," says Drake's Lori Blachford. She got into the communication business back when the only medium was -- paper.
Blachford now incorporates Twitter, Google and e-mail into her class curriculum in the magazine journalism department.
"Communication itself never changes, just the way you go about it changes. The tools you're provided with. And now we just have this glut of tools -- this wonderful treasure chest of tools to use, and we have to find out which work for us," says Blachford.
There is no question that there is now more communication than ever before. But the question begs to be asked: "Are these new tools also killing the quality of our interactions?"
"Look how when you walk down country roads, it used to be people would wave at you. Now they have a cell phone in their hand," says Iowa State professor Michael Bugeja. He says the new devices do more to distract us than they do to help us connect.
"All this really does is send a message that someone somewhere else is more important than the place we are and the person we're with. Now, when you think about that, in Iowa, that's really against everything we know about our culture," says Bugeja.
It's hard to argue when there are walking illustrations of that point just about anywhere you look.
"Like for the industrial revolution," says Iowa State professor, Scott McCleod, "There's going to be a lot of old ways and former ways of doing things that are going to disappear and be replaced by new ways of thinking, new ways of doing, new ways of being."
McCleod says to give the new technology more credit than criticism. After all, friends and family are now at our fingertips.
"That's not a loss of connection, that's a gain of connection compared to where we were before the technologies existed," says McCleod.
Americans spent $32 billion on data services last year, and may hit $50 billion in 2009. That's what you call a "Recession Proof" industry.
Bugeja says, that's the real goal of the technology, and that makes it worse.
"There's a time and a place in society for all manner of communication. Former platforms define those areas with real boundaries. But this has no boundaries. It blurs the boundary between home and work, between school and home, between church, temple, mosque and school. It blurs everything. Why? Because it's programmed for revenue generation. 'We want to make money off you at any time of the day.'"
Whether it's a blessing or a bane is still in question.
Whether it's here to stay isn't.
Facebook. Twitter. Texting. E-mail. Hand-written letters. Wait, one of these doesn't belong.
Alright, the methods are changing, but the premise certainly is not. We're humans, and we love to communicate. These new tools have us more hooked than ever.
Americans sent 363 billion text messages in 2007, over a trillion in 2008, and this year, well, maybe we should just stop counting.
One Drake University student told me, "I do like around 9,000 a month."
Kids will be kids, but the rest of us are in on the revolution, too. My grandmother has a Facebook page. She and 200 million others do. Like 'em or not, the modern methods have taken over.
"It's one of those things where I could kick and scream if I wanted to, but the train's left the station. We can't go back," says Drake's Lori Blachford. She got into the communication business back when the only medium was -- paper.
Blachford now incorporates Twitter, Google and e-mail into her class curriculum in the magazine journalism department.
"Communication itself never changes, just the way you go about it changes. The tools you're provided with. And now we just have this glut of tools -- this wonderful treasure chest of tools to use, and we have to find out which work for us," says Blachford.
There is no question that there is now more communication than ever before. But the question begs to be asked: "Are these new tools also killing the quality of our interactions?"
"Look how when you walk down country roads, it used to be people would wave at you. Now they have a cell phone in their hand," says Iowa State professor Michael Bugeja. He says the new devices do more to distract us than they do to help us connect.
"All this really does is send a message that someone somewhere else is more important than the place we are and the person we're with. Now, when you think about that, in Iowa, that's really against everything we know about our culture," says Bugeja.
It's hard to argue when there are walking illustrations of that point just about anywhere you look.
"Like for the industrial revolution," says Iowa State professor, Scott McCleod, "There's going to be a lot of old ways and former ways of doing things that are going to disappear and be replaced by new ways of thinking, new ways of doing, new ways of being."
McCleod says to give the new technology more credit than criticism. After all, friends and family are now at our fingertips.
"That's not a loss of connection, that's a gain of connection compared to where we were before the technologies existed," says McCleod.
Americans spent $32 billion on data services last year, and may hit $50 billion in 2009. That's what you call a "Recession Proof" industry.
Bugeja says, that's the real goal of the technology, and that makes it worse.
"There's a time and a place in society for all manner of communication. Former platforms define those areas with real boundaries. But this has no boundaries. It blurs the boundary between home and work, between school and home, between church, temple, mosque and school. It blurs everything. Why? Because it's programmed for revenue generation. 'We want to make money off you at any time of the day.'"
Whether it's a blessing or a bane is still in question.
Whether it's here to stay isn't.
