Week 6

Another week of training has ended while another begins. Time continues to slip away from me in my writings. Work, family, friends, travel and training have all taken priority of my thoughts lately.

This is not a bad thing. The reason for the blog was to establish a place for me to put my thoughts down. Recently, my thoughts have not had to be placed in cyber space. I have been able to share them face-to-face with the people in my life and that by far is more important and interesting than this avenue.

Lately, I have been thinking about the way we communicate with other human beings. It seems "The Art" of conversation has changed over the last couple of years. First there was cell phones. I will skip the whole LAN telephone era since it was not a means for people to escape from face-to-face communications. But cell phones, email, communicators and even Facebook seem to have taken a form of society and placed in a microchip.

When our cell phones ring and we see it is someone we know, we can easily avoid them by not answering. This happens even on our house phones as well. I will call someone and get their voicemail. Then 1 minute later they are calling me back after they listen to the message. Now, I know they may have been busy but I see a pattern in a number of people. I find it rude that they do not want to talk with you until they listen to what you have to say first. For this reason I don't have call waiting and answer my cell phone when able.

As for emails and now Facebook. The further technology progresses it seems our social skills are digressing at the same or even faster rate. When we don't want to talk to someone, we text them. When we don't want to tell someone bad news or that we cannot meet them when we said we would we email them. This stream of communication has eliminated the confrontation of disappointment and repercussions or our actions. I am guilty of this as well, but I am making an effort to either call or tell some face-to-face either bad or dissappointing news.

Now we have Facebook. This vehicle of communication is leading us down a path of social destruction. We no longer have to talk to anyone! We can plaster anything and everything on a "Wall", "Having a cup of coffee", "Going to walk the dog", "I am now in a relationship". FB is also being used to be upset at someone, "Blank, stood me up for our date last night" or even to be mean at someone. (You get the point).

I understand Facebook is also used to celebrate accomplishments, birthday's, someone running 10 miles or biking 100 miles. I get it. But, why? Why do we need to know every little thing that goes on in every "Friends" life all the time? Where is the interest then? Where is the mystery in finding out about a person over a beer after work? The way we are heading, the social interaction of humanity is slowly being typed away on Facebook.

I imagine there are plenty of articles out there pushing Facebook and degrading Facebook. Personaly, I have decided to limit my exposure to Facebook. It maybe good for some and I will not talk down about their decisions to be apart of the Facebook society, but for me, it is not a vehicle I particularly would like to use anymore.

I see my daughters drifting towards this vehicle of communication and I do not want to see talking with another human face-to-face to be a lost art form.

With that, if you by chance receive a letter from me or even a birthday card in the mail, don't think that I have been castaway to some "internet void". I am making the time to put a personal touch on our relationship instead of telling 500,000 million Facebook users, "your status".