WHATSDOWN
WITH WHATSAPP!
Nostradamus predicted that in the 21st century
the biggest cause of death will not be cancer but depression caused by
loneliness. Technology is ensuring that his predictions come true. The one
thing that connected humans was conversation- live, one-to- one communication
with words. Now, thanks to Facebook, Whatsapp and other what-have-you’s we are
fast losing the ability to connect through conversation.
Take Whatsapp-it’s a commentary
not a conversation folks! You have all the time to respond which does not
happen in real time scenarios. Someone says ‘hello’ we answer and get talking.
Not so in Whatsapp. Somebody posts a picture and we comment on it. Sometimes,
hours later, when we see it! And, if our comment is met with stony silence it
is not because we have hurt somebody’s feelings but because they have moved on
leaving us to presume, ruminate and get left behind! The basic premise of
communication is two or more people being present at the same time and on the
same topic. On Whatsapp it is disjointed bits being presented with nobody
present!
And, it has made liars of us all. We gush over pictures we
abhor, we agree with views that polarize us just to maintain communication and
we watch with unabashed glee as somebody else becomes the object of ridicule.
We sit like mute monkeys watching the show that only emphasizes our loneliness.
We are then confronted by Hobson’s choice- damned if we do and damned if we
don’t!
Facebook has reduced mankind to one digit to express all our
emotions and one finger to press the icon that shows the emotion. It has
recently added as a sop to the emotionally lazy a whole lot of emoticons to
choose from thereby reducing the crushing burden of words. Slowly the degrees
of separation from animals gets lesser and lesser. Just as a bark and growl
spans the gamut of a dog’s emotion with the visual clue of a tail wag, soon we
humans will be reduced to our thumb and index finger with a frown and smile as
the sum total of all meaningful communication.
Generations later, our descendants will ponder the puzzling
lyrics in the carol “All things Bright and Beautiful” especially the lines- ‘He
gave us eyes to see them, and lips that we might tell’-then scratch his head
for a minute and go back to doing what we bequeathed to them- a race which is
all thumbs and does not have an emotional clue!
Nimmou Nilakantan
