The world is definitely different now. Your smartphone never leaves you, even as an alarm clock for your morning. You are now wearing smart watch and of course watching smart TV every day. Friends from Asia nowadays all pop up on WeChat. Your college, high-school, middle-school classmates all over the world, whom you haven’t heard of (most likely have forgotten) for decades, all started to send you invites to join the group chats or friends’ lists. Your remote siblings, relatives, even your 70 or 80-year-old parents who barely can maneuver a computer mouse, now happily send you a voice message any time or write messages in local languages with their fingers. …
It is indeed an intriguing time. As if our past, present and future are starting to merge and get all entwined in this technology age. You are very occupied, so occupied that can rarely find any moment of solitude. Modern technologies seem to empower us but at the same time diminish us.
Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980), a Canadian thinker, philosopher and communication theorist, once said “We become what we behold. We shape our tools and then our tools shape us. ”
With so much happening around us every day and in such speed, we become oblivious of where we are or who we are. We can know so much about everything else, but so little of ourselves. In this age, everyone gets connected but quickly forgotten. We have no identity other than an icon or avatar on our smartphones, tablets or TV console. And everyone seems to be the same.
McLuhan also noticed, “For tribal man space was the uncontrollable mystery. For technological man it is time that occupies the same role.” It will become more challenging for us to remember that within the limited span of our lifetime, limited minutes in every day, we need seriously dedicate some time and energy to pursue what values most to us. We may be busy with many contemporary pursuits, conformed to many social norms, but there are also things in the world that are simply timeless or make one a unique self – which may only need a little solitude to take notice.