Inês Schinazi
New York City. Underground morning rush, headphones glued to every pair of earlobes in sight. Stuck waiting for the next train. It’s like a silent film, except this time the live music plays in our heads. It can be whatever we want it to be. Personalized soundtrack. While we imagine the inner dialogue, the comic strip, popping, behind the other’s mute stare. Hard to get into it. Push comes to shove.
Finally inside the train, we all exist in our own space. Busy interacting with our own “machine,” ( MP3 players, blackberries, I Phones, digital newspapers,) so isolated while smashed up against what feels like ten million sweaty bodies. Paradox. Stuck together, and yet very much split apart.
How do we define “social interaction?” These days, the bulk of our “social interactions” take place through e-mails, texts, and social networking sites. We have many more virtual social interactions than face-to-face ones. Even when planning for the “face-to-face” we rely on the virtual (text, e-mail, facebook, and maybe the phone) probably spending much more time eyeing machines than each other.
Facebook asks “What’s on your mind?” Asking for a superficial x-ray or scan of our heads. Most of us give it to up. Eyeballing somebody’s profile, there’s no need for interaction when you can literally read somebody’s mind, or at least read what they want to share. No need to ask how people are. No desire to dig deeper. Time efficient. Too clean. A breed of thought lies there, almost too easy to catch, it’s static and raw.
Cyber space reminds me of jammed subway cars. We are all connected and stuck together through Facebook, Twitter, Blogs, etc. It’s literally possible to know exactly what people are doing, thinking, and feeling. Yet, despite all this apparent “connectedness,” individuals have probably never been so distant. After all, most social interaction means talking to machines.
In “Summer in the City,” Regina Spektor sings, “Summer in the city, I’m so lonely, lonely, lonely, so I went to a protest just to rub up against strangers….” No matter how much technology evolves and progresses, I don’t think the seemingly primitive need for “physical rubbing up” will ever disappear.
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