Tradition

The world of technology is one of the fastest growing aspects of human life that exists, the computing power of computers doubles approximately every 2 years (Moore’s law). This exponential growth has allowed for many innovations to be created that were not plausible in the near past. This speed of improvement has allowed technologies like the cell phone, computer, and social networking to thrive and become available to the general public. Having easy access to technologies like computers and cell phones has allowed the tradition of distance and separation between people to fade away.

            The computer has allowed people to be connected by the use of the internet with just a small monthly fee that is viewed as an acceptable expense.  The improvements in computing has led to developments like social networking which can connect people at all hours of the day even when there are potentially continents separating the people. In the past people used to meet in person to invite people to events but now with sites like Facebook all it takes is one to set up an event and click people’s names to invite them. Entire conversations take place over social networking sites that could easily be completed in real life. With the simplicity of sites like Facebook, there arises the possibility of crashes that can make the site temporarily down; The Onion’s satirical story “MySpace Outage Leaves Millions Friendless” tells a story of a hypothetical MySpace blackout that has gripped the country, “…an estimated 50,000 people remain trapped in their apartments, with no way of contacting the outside world…” (The Onion 159) This quote shows how it could be though for the public to deal with the separation again that eluded them when they were all connected by the social network. The ease of connectivity has allowed people to lose sense of separation and distance that at one point was impossible to overcome.

            The cell phone is another innovation that has drastically brought the population closer together and eliminated the distance that once divided people. In the past letters were the fastest way to communicate and it would take months for people to say a small message. The inventions throughout history helped people close the gap between the populations, the invention such as the telegraph led way to the first phones in the country. The first phones were a giant leap, but when the cell phone came and allowed people to talk almost anywhere on the go, the restrictions of distance people faded away. The cell phone has evolved rapidly to make connectivity easier and also the modern day cell phone can almost replace your home computer. In Ellen DeGeneres’ book “This is how we live” she talks about how the cell phone changed the way people lived their lives, “Phones have gone through such an evolution. Now we have this wireless technology that lets us take to anybody, anywhere, anytime.” (DeGeneres 642) The cell phone has allowed us to talk to people that are across the country like they are in the same room, or on the same street.

            The technology behind video games has also allowed many people from across the world.  In the past you could only play with people in the same house but with the inventions of Xbox Live and the PlayStation Network the connectivity has allowed many people to be able to play with each other over the internet; there are over 30 million users for Xbox and 77 million for PlayStation (Wikipedia).  Over 100 million people play video games online which is a community that is located across the world, but they play with each other instantly as if they are in the same room next to one another. Steven Johnson talks about how online interactions are increasing in popularity among in his excerpt from “Everything is Bad for You: Games” he says; “…many online interactions do have the benefit of being genuinely two-way conversations” (Johnson 467) this shows how we can communicate with others even though we are separated by distances that would usually take much time to traverse.

            The growth and expansion of technology has ultimately drawn us together closer and closer together. In the past humanity has been separated by distances that required durations of months in order to communicate with other people, now with the advent of cell phones and the internet the distance that once separated us reduces to almost non-existence.