Advent of Communication Technology – What’s Lost?

iPad, MacBook, lappy, tab,netbook, mobile, wi-fi, e-mail, voice mail, video conferencing...the list is endless and most of them have secured their position in the marketplace in a span of a few years. These are all new means of communication. These are the gadgets which are advancing in leaps and bounds in terms of speed and ease of communication. They are providing us with cheaper, faster and easier options to communicate. One can actually communicate with anybody and everybody in this world. Thanks to the era of “Social Networking” now friends are just a click away. They get updated about your status every millisecond. With so many communication devices and means of communication, are we communicating more and communicating more effectively and efficiently. With so many connections and networks of friends aren’t we devaluing friendship? Are our hearts really beating in “sync”?

The advancement in communication technology is so rapid that the communication gadgets become obsolete in a span of a few months. It is a fact that the children nowadays do not know how to write a letter. The “Gen Y” people enquire how people used to manage their lives without mobiles.

But with such advancement I think we have lost the “Human Touch” in communication. We have lost the emotions in communication. Now it is just the way to say “I like” or “I dislike”. Now it is just “status update” in Facebook. The video conferencing has troubled the aviation industry, but distant relatives are still far away  as they cannot match the time zones and talk to each other even if all the relatives have high speed network connections capable of streaming “HD quality” video chat. With iPads, tablets and wi-fi connection everybody is connected “on the go”, but nobody really connects to friends as there are too many friends. People keep at least 2 mobile connections: one for office and other for personal purpose, but keep it in “Silent mode”, so can’t pick up the calls.

Telephone is obsolete, so is e-mail. Do you remember letters? With these technologies we used to communicate sometimes back in time. We never used to forget the festivals as in each festival it was a ritual to write letters to our elders saying “Pranam” and younger relatives wishing “Shubhkaamnayein”. We never used to forget our friends’ birthdays and we used to drop a greeting card to wish him/her “Happy Birthday” with colours of life. We used to call our friend when we were in real trouble and we used to give full attention to any phone call from our friend and we used to help our friend as he was really in trouble otherwise he would not have called at all.

Letter, Telegram, Telephone. Mobile was nowhere in picture. The sense of emergency was the factor which was responsible for the change in response. Yes, there was a response for each communication, be it letter, telegram or telephone.  With advent of technology and with its spread, it became ubiquitous. Now everything is urgent, which implies nothing is urgent. Everybody is important (Har Ek Friend Zaroori Hota Hai), meaning nobody is important. We are always connected, means we are never connected.

One must understand that the communication devices are only the tools for communication. They are not communication itself. We need to judiciously use the tools. We have to prioritize the means of communication and then actually we can communicate effectively and efficiently.