The Culture of Instant Gratification

I have a love/hate relationship with technology.

I embrace the computer, but don’t have a smart phone – mainly because I refuse to pay the price.  In my area, one month of a smart phone costs approximately three times what I currently pay for one month of internet access.  I’m not denying there are times a smart phone would be convenient, but I’ve also seen how addictive it can be.  I enjoy having downtime from electronics, and I don’t want to be attached at the hip, or hand, or ear.

I like my Kindle, but I love the feel of a paperback book in my hands.  My Kindle is great for having untold numbers of books readily accessible, as long as I have battery life.  It’s taken the place of a smart phone when I’ve spent hours sitting in hospital waiting rooms, or waited in the van for soccer practices to end.  But there’s a different connection with a paperback book in my hands.  The texture of the paper, the motion of turning the page... it’s just so easy to get lost in a book!
The internet makes it easy to stay in touch with family and friends far away, which I love, but I hate how people sometimes hide behind the relative anonymity it offers.  That’s a hypocritical statement, because sometimes I crave the anonymity as well.

But my biggest issue with technology today is the culture of instant gratification it has created.  Many people can’t function without checking their email or social media sites constantly.  Instead of face-to-face conversations, they communicate in short bursts via texting, Facebook or Twitter.  Companies exploit their clients to generate more sales by promising products that are faster than their rivals, and consumers buy into it because they crave even more immediacy.

“The unmistakable message people receive in both the workplace and marketplace is that faster is better,” writes Ronald Alsop, a freelance journalist and book author as well as longtime reporter and editor for The Wall Street Journal.  His article, Instant Gratification & Its Dark Side, explores the effect of technology on the millennial generation (those born during the 1980s and 1990s).

Unfortunately, in the quest for instant gratification, it is easy to forget that there are real people on the other end.  Being compelled to comment or post something NOW causes people to simply react with words, rather than considering the effect their words may have on others.  That’s when we run into trouble.

I’m just as guilty as the next person when it comes to craving instant gratification, even without a smart phone.  I’m a social person so I like knowing what is going on, even though I don’t really need to know all the time.  There are times when my kids are more likely to converse through texts than they are in person, so I take advantage of that.  And yes, I enjoy some aspects of social media - it’s darned addicting!

That being said, when I participate in social media, I try to abide by some basic guidelines that I hope I have instilled in my own millenials:
– Don’t be rude.
– Think about your words.  How would they affect YOU if you were the intended recipient?
– Remember that what happens online stays online...forever.  It might come back to bite you.
– Sometimes you have to be the bigger person and just let things go.

Sometimes instant gratification is not all it’s cracked up to be!

How do you feel about technology and instant gratification?  Do you love it, or hate it?  Please share.

Are You a Plugged in or an Unplugged?

As HiDee pointed out in her post last week, there is a sense among us that our technology is intruding on our lives. While I agree and believe there needs to be balance, when the zombie apocalypse comes and the world of technology falls away, I'll still love my gadgets. I know this.

Last summer I started walking down the steps of my back porch to go outside when suddenly a strange feeling came over me. I felt like I was out of my body, which sounds not quite sane, but as I walked into the back yard I couldn't connect the feel of the ground with my feet taking steps. My heart started racing and I realized what I was feeling meant I might pass out, so I went back inside my house. My husband came home about a half-hour later and we wrestled with what to do – call 911, call my doctor, drive to the emergency room? Ultimately, since my pulse had reached 120 beats per minute and my blood pressure was out of sight, I ended up in an ambulance, which took me to an emergency room, where soon it was discovered that my levels of potassium were depleted.

Turns out, potassium depletion is serious business. The doctor prescribed high-dose potassium supplements and I assumed that since I took the first dose of potassium in the emergency room I would soon be back to normal. Wrong. The next morning I felt fine, so I started my day full steam as usual, grateful the health issue was over. Wrong. What started out as a normal day quickly deteriorated when I started the coffeemaker and a load of laundry. The strange feelings returned and I made a beeline for the couch. Irritated.

Then began my days in a row of being unplugged. Since potassium is utilized by muscles in muscle movement, everything I did, every movement, from breathing to eating to using a mouse while sitting at my desk, elicited the same heart-racing, nearly-fainting sensations I first experienced.

I surrendered. During the two weeks I was recovering I relaxed my incessant checking, answering, and writing of emails related to anything, including work. I admit I kept my smart phone by my side so that a. I could contact my husband and ask him to come home NOW to take me back to the hospital, and b. so I could stay plugged in at a low level. But overall it was a forced unplugged for two weeks. Did I find it relaxing? Yes, because I wasn't connected to anything in which I needed to expend energy and anything or anyone who needed me to do something got ignored because I was out of all loops. Did I find it soothing? No. I discovered that, as I love technology and being constantly plugged, I felt a bit of agitation at its absence, at the silence. This is what advocates of less technology in our lives point to as signs of imbalance in my life.

These advocates of the state of unpluggedness attribute our general fascination with technology with decline in interpersonal skills and attention span, among other things they see as negative results of too much dependence on technology. In a commentary on Christian Broadcasting Network (which I am not in any way promoting), Mark Earley suggests we all take stock of our relationship with our electronics.

"Try this experiment: Shut down your computer, turn off your cell phone, unplug your iPod, hide your Blackberry, and click off the television. Then, pick up a book. Read for an hour. When you’re done, pull out a sheet of paper and write a letter. And then, go for a walk outside. If you find this scenario difficult, you’re not alone," he writes.

For those who are concerned about their imbalance, their "addiction" to cell phones, computers, and game systems, there's an official day to escape. Those who participate in March in the National Day of Unplugging turn off all their technology for 24 hours to reap benefits derived from taking a break from constant checking of all things email, Facebook, and the like, wrote Howard Baldwin in PC World.   

"Their goal is to get the rest of us to—paraphrasing Timothy Leary here—turn off, tune out, and drop off. That is, stop using our cell phones, smartphones, laptops, tablets, PCs, iPods, et cetera, and come back from the virtual world into the physical world where our spouses, children, partners, and pets actually live. For 24 hours, at least, we’re supposed to ignore our compulsions to check e-mail, update Facebook, and generally make our colleagues know we’re still available if they need us," Baldwin writes.

My forced unplugged status was interesting, as an observer of myself, in that I saw the effects of my constant connectedness. I was on alert more than I needed to be – but equally interesting to learn was that I enjoy the stimulation of it. It soothes me in a sense. It's what I prefer. I love technology, even though I can appreciate that it can take over and become a detriment to many things, such as relationships and health and sustaining things we all find pleasurable. Uninterrupted conversation. Full attention on one thing. One interesting observation, though, was related to technology but was all about being a writer. What I knew, but got a glimpse of it more in my face, is that as a writer I am always plugged into my work. Whether I'm brainstorming while riding my bike, or snatching bits of conversation to file away for future use in my writing, or putting words to experiences around me, I'm always working, in a sense. And I find it enriching, just as I find technology attractive.

So yeah, balance in all things is important. But though I may get twitchy if I'm separated from laptop for very long and I may get glazy-eyed while conversing with someone when I haven't recently checked my phone for messages, I think there are innumerable pay offs for access to the many things technology delivers. And I'm wondering if there are two kinds of people: those who are soothed by technology and those who are not. What do you think?

Image from Dreamstime

Is Handwriting a Lost Art?

Office supply stores are one of my weaknesses. In particular, I’m drawn to the selection of pens and paper filling the shelves. If only they were unpackaged so I could try them all. The old quill pens gave me the willies, like fingernails on a chalkboard. Shudder. I don’t want to hear my pen scrawling my words. I prefer using a nice medium ball-point pen with blue ink.

There is something magical about the feel of a good pen in my hand. Words flow more easily from my pen onto paper than words I type on my computer. Maybe it’s because I type faster than I can write, and so when I’m typing, my fingers get ahead of my thoughts. Stopping to think interrupts the flow. But when I write by hand, my thoughts flow ahead, leaving my pen to follow. 

I blame my obsession with pen and paper on my dad. Throughout my childhood he fed my need to write, often giving me half-used notepads and pens he no longer favored. I tried to pass that on to my children. When they were toddlers, I gave them small notepads and pens when we traveled even short distances because it kept them occupied. Today, some of those pages with their first drawings, their first written words, are tucked into scrapbooks I cherish.

My mom has been going through storage boxes and trying to clean things out. She found mementos from our childhoods, and gave some back to each of us. Pictures from when we were babies, all the way up to more recent pictures, were identified with handwritten names and dates on the back. Handwritten school report cards. Newspaper clippings dated by hand. It was fun looking through it all. 

It was personal. I felt an emotional connection. And I fear that the emotional connection we have with things handwritten may one day be lost.

In his book titled The Missing Ink: The lost art of handwriting (and why it still matters), author Philip Hensher explores the value of handwriting. He writes, “Handwriting is what registers our individuality, and the mark which our culture has made on us. It has been seen as the unknowing key to our souls and our innermost nature. It has been regarded as a sign of our health as a society, of our intelligence, and as an object of simplicity, grace, fantasy and beauty in its own right.” 

Is Our Individuality at Stake?
If recent news articles are accurate, our individuality may be at stake. It is being reported that many states are looking at adoption of national curriculum guidelines that as of 2014 will not include cursive handwriting, but will instead require proficiency in computer keyboarding for students completing their elementary education.

The world today is filled with technology. While I acknowledge the importance of kids learning how to use it, I cringe to think of handwriting being more or less eliminated.

Handwriting, in many forms, has stood the test of time.

Caves with Stone Age drawings and symbols adorning their walls fascinate scientists who have discovered them. Handwritten historical documents found and preserved have provided a means for us to learn much about what happened in the past. Coded messages written by military personnel and sent by carrier pigeons enabled our troops to communicate with each other when other means of communication were not available. Handwriting connected people of the world

In the current age of technology, handwriting appears to be a lost art. Kids rarely color or write with pen and paper. Schools require kids to work on computers, to submit typed reports and papers. Many of the students who do write do so in print, rather than in cursive. If they can’t, or don’t, write in cursive, do they know how to read it?

Computers are at the core of many businesses. Employees are required to create documents, to communicate and share correspondence over e-mail and via the internet. Social media entices people to share life details, some of which should not be shared. Cell phones are replacing landline phones, and being carried and used by many. iPads and other tablets are becoming increasingly common tools for communication.

Has Technology Created a Monster?
All of this technology fuels impatience in people. Technology has vastly improved many aspects of our world today, but it has also created a monster: instant gratification.

I’m not against technology. But some days I yearn for simpler times.

I love my computer and I enjoy being able to stay in touch with far-flung friends and family on Facebook. My cell phone is a very basic phone with the capability to call or text; it doesn’t have a camera and it doesn’t surf the web. I just don’t want to be connected 24/7. Conversely, I recently ordered a tablet, which I hope to use for reading and writing on the run. Am I doomed?

I miss the days when kids went outside to play, running the neighborhood with friends instead of sitting on their butts all day playing video games. We had face-to-face relationships instead of cyber ones. We actually talked to people, and we listened to people. Maybe we didn’t want to, but it’s hard to ignore them when they are right in front of you.

I also miss the days when we wrote and received letters. Some of my most cherished belongings are handwritten letters from my grandmother. I’m hoping to one day at least get to read a shoebox full of letters currently not in my possession; letters my uncle wrote to my grandmother during the war. Anticipation is a heady feeling.

With instant gratification, there is no anticipation. We rely so heavily on our devices for communication and entertainment. It’s all at our fingertips, literally. But what happens when our batteries drain, when the power is out or we have no reception? 

Without technology, we are left to our own devices. Some people are so connected they wouldn’t know what to do without their devices. Not me. I have my trusty pen and paper.

Do you also yearn for simpler times, or do you prefer to be connected to technology?