So today is
Friday right? We used to call it members day, a time when the weekend would
officially begin. These two days of the week are to be looked forward to
especially as you grow older. The challenge is always the fact that it comes to
an end abruptly, then the Monday blues, back to work again. I bet if we all
stayed out of work, there would be a big riot isn’t it? But wait a minute. Did I see you watching TV
last night at exactly 9 pm prime time news?
Or did you just see it as part of the background noise? Did you actually
switch it at all, or is it left permanently for the little kids watching
cartoons? And if you did watch news, was
it not to confirm what you already knew? By the way, when is the last time you
read a newspaper cover to cover? Are you actually reading this from the
confines of that little gadget called smartphone (are there ‘dumb’ phones
really?), on an online platform?How many real friends do you have nowadays as compared to your ‘face-book’ friends? At times you haven’t seen them in years, yet you are constantly updated of their latest developments? When you hear someone saying that… didn’t you see it trending, is it in the circles that you don’t belong to? What about the illusion of fame and ‘celebrity’ status that came with presence in the mainstream media, versus the new social media influencer who your fellow millennials, nay baby boomers haven’t heard about. What about being in a social gathering and people preferring to ‘talk’ and give all the attention to their phones, in search of the familiar, instead of making live connections through the conversations that may emanate from those around them?
The future is interesting to imagine, looking at how we used to communicate the before and now. In fact, we used to get fascinated about meeting someone in person as compared to how they appeared or sounded on TV! Now, what is more contrasting is the personality between what people project online versus their true selves. You find a very bold and controversial person online, only to find that in real life, they are very humble and even shy! At times, social media apps give room to someone to be direct to the point without the usual honorifics or mannerisms that are dictates in the society. However, real life is now copying online, and with catastrophic effects especially to the younger generation.
We now have a
large group of young, educated, unemployed people ‘armed’ with a smartphone and
bundles. They have watched superman and they too would like to do exploits
within the cyber space. In a world where the thin line between virtual and
reality has been blurred, and that literary everything can be framed as
‘content creation’ digitally. Very
confusing times indeed, whereby borders and boundaries are more imaginary,
since within the cyberspace, it doesn’t matter ones location. A vocal,
rabble-rousing lawyer based in Canada, can be influencing conversations in the
streets of Nairobi through X or is it Twitter account. Isn’t not account
literary to ‘store’ personal information hence data? Communication is now borderless;
it’s very possible therefore to shape public opinion from afar. This privilege
what heretofore only available to the international media.
Before, people would read newspapers from cover to cover, but today, they are only interested in the headlines that circulate far and wide especially through WhatsApp. It’s therefore very important to understand that people used to like reading, then came the audio, and with the advent of the video, the focus has shifted. This is because with a video, you don’t have to read. You see here and the imagination is more vivid. This has had a very serious effect. The fact that with the help of phone camera, anyone can record anything, it has led to the generation of so much content that its estimated that in the next two years, the data gotten out of this is more than the one available since the world began. No wonder machine learning has leapfrogged into the development of artificial intelligence, which benefits from our collective data sourcing out of our own daily activities. This therefore has led to information overload thus the concentration span has really reduced, as our minds are now adapted to constant scrolling through the phone without looking for anything in particular. We all want to watch the next short video, or see what features the photos of a given individual have.
A husband and wife will be in bed, not talking, each addicted to the content online, and therefore talking to their phones and not each other. Young mothers are feeding their toddler’s brain with the smartphone, so that they too can be on another gadget.
While at first it looks like we are all interconnected, the real situation is that algorithms and the multiplicity of new sources and preferences of content thereof, have fragmented us all the more.
This is a debate that we need to have if we are to preserve the values and principles of a truly prosperous society. It’s a crisis.
