Universalis, your very own breviary in pixels...

Sunday 22 April 2012

Our Autistic Society

Yet another person has noticed what some of us have been saying for years, (although she doesn't use the word "autistic"):
We live in a technological universe in which we are always communicating. And yet we have sacrificed conversation for mere connection....

Over the past 15 years, I’ve studied technologies of mobile connection and talked to hundreds of people of all ages and circumstances about their plugged-in lives. I’ve learned that the little devices most of us carry around are so powerful that they change not only what we do, but also who we are.

We’ve become accustomed to a new way of being “alone together.” Technology-enabled, we are able to be with one another, and also elsewhere, connected to wherever we want to be. We want to customize our lives. We want to move in and out of where we are because the thing we value most is control over where we focus our attention. We have gotten used to the idea of being in a tribe of one, loyal to our own party...

we can end up hiding from one another, even as we are constantly connected to one another.
Yes, we are changing who we are, we are becoming a species without affect.
As a society we are not just losing our ability to read others emoticons, we are losing the facial wherewithal to express our own.
Over-indulgence in botox will cease to be a handicap to actors attempting to portray "real" people, as non-chemically-induced Face Freeze becomes universal.

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