Digital Dependence

This article also another for the PCWorld Community Voices. I initially wanted to post this on 18 August but totally forgot about it. So here it is. View the web version here if u wish, they are both exactly the same.

Start

As you go about your life today, reflect, how many electronic devices have you used ? Laptops, handphones, Blackberrys, Ipods? Now imagine, one day, what if these devices were removed from you and you still have to continued your life as per normal.

I will bet my bottom dollar that most of you will not be able to survive “efficiently”. This is the price we pay of being too reliant on such gadgets, and gadgets for being too converged. We see this devices as virtual extensions of ourselves into the realm of cyber communications.

The devices we carry today are now more sophisticated than ever before. Take the new Nokia N95 for example, it is can function as a pocket computer, GPS receiver, normal handphone, MP3 player and loads more. With such features, one would think, is there a need for me to carry another device. Herein lies the problem, having just one device means convenience. And yet at the same time, it is all too convenient to lose that one device than to lose all 4. When that happens, we “cannot survive” as long as we are unconnected, or thats what conventional wisdom implies.

But one has to admit in this growing of technologically-advanced societies world-wide, accurate information has to be obtained fast and immediate. The astonishing pace of information that sometimes reach us may possibly even “overload” us. But ironically, some people like it that way, some even arrogantly claim that if we do not have access, to ask us to prove a way to succeed in life.

Now I’m not advocating that we should throw away our handphones and laptops, my point here is that all of you should sit down and reflect upon what is really necessary in our lives. Is it really important to stay connected 24/7? Or should you allocate more time to your neglected families and personal hobbies?

How I did I know this? Because I lost my handphone for an entire day before finding it back. In that span of 12 hours, I felt emotionally lost as I lost my ability to communicate with my friends who were physically out of sight. Thus, I realised all these. The invention of digital communicative devices, has made our lives much more complicated than ever before. And most of all, made us addicted to the taste of increased communication.