Technology replaces personal contact

Perform a little experiment. Count the number of electronic devices that you use from the moment that you wake up to when you go to bed at night. Most of us would count over 150 gadgets that we use to make our lives a little less tedious. It is hard to imagine that only 70 years ago, one had to write a letter to get in touch with a friend who lived in another state.

Now, distant friends and family are only a phone call or an instant message away. Technology is transforming the world into a global village. Distance is no longer an obstacle for communication. All of us at GHC are old enough to remember the world without the Internet. Do you ever wonder how you lived without the tool that puts a seemingly infinite amount of information at your fingertips?

Contrary to popular belief, this vast library of data has not created a better informed world populace. In fact, because of it, the human race is becoming drastically misinformed. Websites like Wikipedia are places where anything, true or not, can be presented as fact. The Internet does have its benefits, and there are websites that keep standards for the information that they disseminate.

The issue is that it is becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish these websites from those that purposely present ambiguities as truth. The world that websites such as Myspace and Facebook have created is one drastically devoid of personal contact with those we love. Instead of visiting a friend or relative, one can simply "contact" them with the click of a mouse.

The Internet is widening the divisions of an already fractured society, readily trivializing every aspect of our culture. We are a lazy species, to the point of not caring about what is happening to our culture. Talking, that beautiful, millennia- old form of communication may become a dying practice.

It will be a sad day indeed if this happens, not only because we have quit talking, but because we will not know why we have quit talking, and because thinking will be next to go.