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8/29/2008 - Technology et Absurdum

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As a byproduct of technological advancement we have become an inherently bred race of introverts. Our eyes glued to the soft glow of the LCD. Our fingers and thumbs pleasantly tapping away at keyboards, both large and small. We find our selves not communicating with each other, but extensions of who we are. Extensions of what we were. Representations for a face no longer found in a mirror. Rarely does one cross paths with another capable of the elegance of the language that our forefathers once had. Conversation and rhetoric has become a lost art.

In an age where actions are instant and items are produced in incomprehensible quantities, ready for disposal, we treat our relationships with one another the same way.

Social interaction, particularly to us existentialists, can be seen as a primary piece of life's worth: an argument against the absurd. Without others to relate our systems of language to, we're left with nothing but an absurd, arbitrary structure. As we become more in tune with the technology around us, we become less and less in touch with reality, ourselves, and most importantly: one another. Our conversations and daily interactions become more abridged and our phrases abbreviations: perversions of what they once stood for. The less we interact, the further and further we fall from intimacy with our fellow man.

It is this sincere lack of intimacy: of words, of hands, of open doors; that places us in the Absurd. I see it more and more around me everyday, perfectly good opportunities for human compassion become inconveniences to those found torn from their Silicon Otherworld. I live for; I thrive on human interaction. For the existentialist, its one of the only things worth getting out of bed for in the morning. For the existentialist, technology is the Absurd.

Technology destroys our material world, it destroys our language, it destroys our relationships. Money becomes a wire transfer. Our letters, a collection of electrons firing off of a screen. Our relationships: just a number in parenthesis below a picture of ourselves we'll change tomorrow.

As I sit in my chair, I take comfort in its reality. Its solidity. Its solidarity. My solidarity. I know that tomorrow, barring any fires, this chair will still be here. I can rely on it, this I know. Its not until I take into consideration that that which means so much to me, to others, can be gone with the click of a mouse or the stroke of a key that the Nausea sets in.

I fear technology, I fear what it has done to me: to others. What it will do. What it can do.

For me, technology has destroyed what I love so much: Intimacy. Humanity. Compassion. The Human Experience.

But why? Why can't we embrace it as something else?

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