Through the years, the performance of our technology has been constantly improving. From personal computers to mobile phones, we find convenience through technology. Technology and the Internet has become the remedy to the inconvenience of using other types of media. Truly, it has proved its worth in our daily lives.

On the other hand, this remedy has obvious side effects that greatly affect our social lives. In her speech entitled ‘Alone Together’ in TEDxUIUC, Sherry Turkle said that as we try to develop our computers to keep it ‘busy’, we learned to reach out to each other through the technology that we have. It turns out we are not keeping it busy. Instead, it’s the other way around, our technology is the one keeping us busy. To put it simply, the technology that we have is eating up our social lives, in that case, real lives. Turkle stated different instances wherein we tend to multi-task but it turns out that we are already ‘multi-lifing.’ We tend to do things with the help of technology in the sense of multi-tasking without realizing that we are already creating a virtual life of our own.

“Modern technology has become like a phantom limb, it is so much a part of us.”

Turkle, S., 2011

As we grow up with technology, life without it now seems to be impossible. Parallel to how Turkle sees technology or the internet, I believe that it really grown to become a part of us. It definitely cured our desire to improve certain aspects of our lives. It opened a window that made living easier. However, this cure, this modernization is slowly jeopardizing our lives. As it continuously improves, we are getting the idea that we can abandon our real lives at any time and at any place to live our virtual lives, the personality we created in the virtual world of technology. Indeed, this cure that modernization offers is inducing side effects to our lives that can be very harmful to our social aspects, to our ability to communicate, to our ability to express ourselves physically.

“In continual contact, we’re alone together… People are comforted by being in touch with a lot of people, whom they also keep at bay.”

Turkle, S., 2011

The technology and the Internet that we have today may be offering new and easier ways to communicate with other people. However, as Turkle analyzed it, we are constantly wanting to communicate but we fear intimacy with the people we want to communicate with. We are lonely people who want to communicate but want to hide our real selves. We half-heartedly express ourselves because we are afraid that people may know too much about us. We want to constantly communicate but at the same time we want to control how much other people may be intimate with us, the reason why we resort to using the Internet, the technology that we continuously improved to communicate with each other. Indeed, we are alone together, we developed a sense of togetherness in the virtual world but we are really alone in the real world.

We may think of ways to “reclaim conversations” but at the end of the day, it will only dawn on us that completely avoiding the use of the technology and the internet is impossible. The only way we can somewhat reclaim conversation is to minimize using it. We may never stop communicating with the use of technology but we can start expressing ourselves more through it. We can rethink of the purposes of technology and realize that it is never meant to hide ourselves from the real world. We can express ourselves through it without hiding behind the mask of the virtual world. We can remake this cure and remove its side effects so that we may never be alone together anymore.

Source/s:

This is an example post, originally published as part of Blogging University. Enroll in one of our ten programs, and start your blog right.

You’re going to publish a post today. Don’t worry about how your blog looks. Don’t worry if you haven’t given it a name yet, or you’re feeling overwhelmed. Just click the “New Post” button, and tell us why you’re here.

Why do this?

• Because it gives new readers context. What are you about? Why should they read your blog?
• Because it will help you focus you own ideas about your blog and what you’d like to do with it.

The post can be short or long, a personal intro to your life or a bloggy mission statement, a manifesto for the future or a simple outline of your the types of things you hope to publish.

To help you get started, here are a few questions:

• Why are you blogging publicly, rather than keeping a personal journal?
• What topics do you think you’ll write about?
• Who would you love to connect with via your blog?
• If you blog successfully throughout the next year, what would you hope to have accomplished?

You’re not locked into any of this; one of the wonderful things about blogs is how they constantly evolve as we learn, grow, and interact with one another — but it’s good to know where and why you started, and articulating your goals may just give you a few other post ideas.

Can’t think how to get started? Just write the first thing that pops into your head. Anne Lamott, author of a book on writing we love, says that you need to give yourself permission to write a “crappy first draft”. Anne makes a great point — just start writing, and worry about editing it later.

When you’re ready to publish, give your post three to five tags that describe your blog’s focus — writing, photography, fiction, parenting, food, cars, movies, sports, whatever. These tags will help others who care about your topics find you in the Reader. Make sure one of the tags is “zerotohero,” so other new bloggers can find you, too.