That Girl from Derwent dwells on the value of religion this Christmas.
That Girl from Derwent has learned a few more things about prejudice since moving up North.
That Girl From Derwent reckons if you're going to be offensive, you should find a better reason.
That Girl from Derwent considers why it is that some words have wider implications than others.
I love books, I always have done. It’s not just the story, I love the smell of the pages, I love seeing the tip of my bookmark tempting me to carry on. I love finishing a book and touching the back cover as a sort of thank you: a recognition that the words have touched me. So when I first saw an advert for the Amazon Kindle I was saddened, and a little apprehensive about the future of my beloved paperbacks. A Kindle is an e-book reader that allows you to download books to store and read on a magic little box, but to me it is the gravestone of bookshops, the cold, ominous slab that marks the end of a beautiful institution. With a Kindle there’s no need to browse the shelves of your favourite bookshop absentmindedly, listening to the soothing music playing in the background, perhaps being recommended a book by someone also browsing the same section and being enthused by their passion for a story that meant so much that they wanted to share it. Instead, you can download something online, on a whim, in your room, alone...
Now many of you will completely disagree and probably be muttering words like ‘convenience’ and ‘innovative’ as you read this, but there’s something to be said for those dusty volumes on your shelf, some may carry their own stories beyond what’s written on the pages, stained with tears when a character broke your heart, crinkled where you gripped the edges with expectation, the spine broken from finding comfort in hearing the story over and over again. When we finish an e-book, the story and the emotions simply disappear into the ether, lost to the iron laws of logic. It’s not just the Kindle that makes me apprehensive, many of you cannot have failed to notice the unhealthy obsession with social networking. It began with Bebo in that painfully chavvy phase, it progressed to Myspace when everyone wanted to relate how much angst they could make bleed from their profile, and then began the era of Facebook...
I swore to myself that I’d never get Facebook, too many apps, too much fuss, who even cared what their eye colour said about their personality? Now I check my Facebook about four times a day and the scary thing is I don’t think I could ever get rid of it...
It’s not about seeing what people watched on TV last night or stalking people from your old high school to see who’s gotten fat, it’s more the fact that it’s become almost the sole method of communication in terms of events, meetings, and even job opportunities. It seems everyone has become far too lazy to send out actual party invitations, or arrange posters for events, instead we just put an event on Facebook and expect everyone to check it regularly for developments. It is convenient, but it also makes people become dependent on it, if we don’t check our Facebook for a few days we could have made the mistake of missing a friend’s birthday party and as a result losing their friendship because ‘sorry, I didn’t go on Facebook’ isn’t a valid excuse; not turning up to an event run by a society and so being perceived as not committed which might discourage you from going to future events; or even missing out on a job that would be perfect for you because the applications were sent out in a Facebook email three days ago and now the deadline has passed.
These are extreme cases, but still enough to make me worry, still enough to make me sign in before I start my work, or during my lunch break, or before I go to bed. And that’s not all: our interactions on social networking sites have changed the way we interact with people in real life. The etiquette, the norms that used to be in place have now changed. The slightest thing on someone’s profile –whether it be their love of Aqua, or their affinity for historical novels – can change our perception of people before we even meet them. We make snap judgements that could be entirely wrong, but because we think we’ve got someone figured out by their profile we make no effort to prove ourselves wrong (or right). Who needs to call their friends to see how they’re doing when we can just check their status and click the ‘like’ button? We no longer need to ask people what they’ve been up to, we can just see a chronological list starting with their 9.00am Cheerios and ending in their 3.00am kebab outside Ziggy’s. Maybe it’s a good thing having an outlet for the mundane, we already know all the little details of people’s lives so when we have actual conversations we can simply start with ‘so what do you think about climate change?’, but that only works if we take the time to dislodge ourselves from our swivel chairs and venture into to the real world to see our friends.
Technology is great in many ways, it shows a spark of ingenuity, of the genius of human capability, the first great leaps of technological development represented our capacity for life, the planes that broadened our horizons, the televisions that opened our eyes, the cars that brought us independence… but that’s what I think is missing from recent advances in technology – the spark of life.
You must log in to submit a comment.
