With the advent of better technology, it's becoming increasingly easier to stay in contact with old friends and relatives. I have about eighty people on my Instant Messenger buddy list. Especially prolific on the list are friends and acquaintances from high school, some of whom I figured I would never talk to again. Yet, through BlitzMail, Instant Messenger, ICQ, you name it, it seems we can stay connected with many people we care about.
But are we connected?
It's true that you can find out what's going on, factually, in your distant friends' lives through their words on the screen. But I have found lately that there is something missing, something that is terribly important. You need to be able to see someone and hear his or her voice to really understand that person, I think. There have been so many times where a friend is relating a story over IM about something upsetting her, and I want to be there, to say in my own voice, I know. I am here to listen and to comfort you. And instead, all I have the capability to do is type "I'm sorry," or some other words that are not me at all. My voice is not heard through Geneva 12 point font, nor through any other mechanically produced symbols. The closest thing that allows a person to express a bit of himself is through handwriting, as in a note or a letter. And, unfortunately, my handwriting is atrocious, so the only avenues that seem available for speaking as myself are the telephone, or a
visit in person. I wish that we could visit our closest friends as often as we'd like to, but it remains impossible. So the telephone seems the last feasible option. It works well, I grant that. However, there is still the longing to see and touch the person. Am I alone in this belief?
The biggest problem with things like IM may not even be your own voice's misrepresentation. I think a worse situation is feeling a lack of connection with whom you are communicating, or even developing false beliefs about that person. Of two of my best friends, one is quite comfortable speaking through IM and the other uses almost monosyllabic responses in such conversations. The result? I have ended up keeping in touch better with the first than the second, even though they are of equal value to me. If I were a stranger to the second, speaking to him for the first time through IM, I might get the impression that he didn't care about the conversation, or even worse, that he was not very intelligent. Both of these assumptions can only be known as false to me because I know him already, having shared experiences with him in person. Some people find themselves more comfortable in one mode of expression than another. I realize that someone's IM words do not accurately reflect who h
e or she is. There have been times when I will carry on several "conversations" through the computer, and at that moment more than any other feel utterly alone.
Even on campus, the feeling of distance and separation is present. Our major mode of communication is BlitzMail, through which anything from lunch invitations to drunken gibberish is expressed. All of the voices of our friends at Dartmouth, though radically different from each other, come enveloped in the same small letters in the same message boxes. Though technically communicating with each other through the cold world made up of wires, circuits, and electrical bursts of activity, we are not connecting at all. I wonder if I will even connect with you through this writing. The words are there on the newsprint. You can touch them. But there are thousands of copies of those same words, and those words are packaged in the same style as those of another column next to them. What does it mean to be connected to someone? I don't think most of us even realize it when it is happening. The next time you talk in person to a friend, please appreciate the experience. It is no certain thin
g that the next time you communicate with that person will not be through wires and circuits.
These are strange words for a probable CS major, I know. I'm not even sure I have a distinct message to convey with his column, and I realize it's a departure from my usual humor-aimed writings. I guess what I'm trying to say is that above all things, we need to value our face-to-face interactions with other people. We are human, after all, and there is no greater thing in the world for me than being able to talk to and spend time with someone I care about, in person. Life is very short, and time moves very quickly when you least want it to.
