So I live in Florida, have for 99% of my life so far. I love it, despite the hurricanes and sometimes too sunny sunshine, and the occasional tornadoes when thunderstorms dredge them up.
Yesterday we were having some wicked horrible weather: the type of rain that goes slanted / sideways, thunder, lightening, the whole nine yards. Add tornado warnings to the mix and it made for some very interesting driving.
I know mother nature is to be respected, and I'm totally fine with that. It is what it is. Florida weather is florida weather. It's awesome. But what I found funny and very interesting is how our society reacts when nature messes with the dependability of our electronics, particularly our mobile devices and the data speed / availability. It's so funny!
I use my phone and certain apps to buy and sell, apps like Offerup and Letgo, I'm sure you've heard of them. So I was out and about yesterday, meeting up with a woman to sell her something through the Offerup app. I hadn't been paying attention to the weather reports for yesterday, my usual thing is to just look outside or step outside and determine if it's hot or cold, clouds in the sky or not, and I'm good to go. So I thought nothing of all the clouds outside, just thought, well I should've put an umbrella in my car haha!
So I get to the agreed upon meetup spot to meet my buyer and we are using the Offerup app to message each other (which relies on my cell phone's data of course) and I'm having the hardest time getting the app to work, I briefly saw that I had messages from my buyer, but I couldn't access them. So frustrating when your'e trying to meet up with someone and you don't have their phone number because you're relying on the app to talk to each other. It took us 20 minutes of refeshing and restarting our phones and driving around this huge parking lot in front of a park to finally find each other. My buyer told me her phone's data was also acting up.
All this run-around because our cell phone's data was being slowed by the current weather (and the weather that was brewing ahead). Usually my meetups are super smooth because of my fast, reliable cell phone data. This one really opened my eyes to the cold, hard truth of how far we've come in society (as far as technological developments, being able to meetup with strangers to sell individual items rather than say, having a garage sale), but also how interesting it is that we are so dependent on this technology, that people don't need to even talk on the phone with each other, give each other their phone numbers even, before meeting up in person for the first time.
At least in the past, with online dating, for example, phone numbers would be exchanged before people would meet up, you know?
I just found this crazy.
The other thing was how the progressed and the weather worsened, my boyfriend and I were still having crappy cell phone data. It was very frustrating. He couldn't watch his precious Netflix shows, I couldn't post more items for sale on my favorite apps. SO frustrating. (At least my activities are attempts at earning some money, eh)
What's even more interesting is how we didn't even think to just put our phones down and try to do one of the many primal activities people without electricity and cell phones would do in the past. No, I'm not talking about sex.
I'm talking about talking!
Why on earth didn't it occur to us to just take advantage of our time together, the rainy weather, being inside, our cell phones not working for what we wanted them to do, why didn't we just think to sit and talk to each other?
Is it because we've been together for 9 years now? Do we just not have anything to say to each other? Seems we can go back and forth talking about random stuff when we're in the car or if we're in the kitchen cooking together. Are we bored with each other? Seems we come up with some very interesting things when we can actually get a conversation going between us.
No, no, no.
It's just what having cell phones has done to us. Cell phones with fast data and unlimited internet usage available in the palms of our hands. We no longer have to get seated at our huge desktop computers or even our slim notebook laptop computers at a desk and wait for dial-up or whatever internet you want to equate with "the past". Nope, all of it fits in our pocket. We can watch our favorite shows, sell stuff on apps, and go to as many websites as we want with our little cell phones (heck I have 58 tabs open right now in my browser on my phone!).
And when our data slows down, even just a bit slower than what we're used to, well let's all agree sometimes our phone becomes in danger of being thrown at a wall, maybe? We get used to such novelties, such conveniences, so fast in our society now. Couple this with the very real decrease in actual face-to-face conversations that span any longer than 2-3 minutes at a time, with topics that aren't about what we just found on our phones, and it makes one stop to ponder. Especially when one can't access anything data-related on their phone!
I'm not trying to label this as a black and white thing, good or bad. The technology we're so lucky to have with our phones is amazing and has provided value in so many different ways to so many people. I acknowledge that and I'm definitely one of those people! I discovered steemit on my phone! I'm just trying to get people to maybe realize that it may take a bit of conscious effort to try to find a balance between technology and being a human being on a primal level.
Talk to your fellow humans face to face once in awhile eh? Give each other hugs and kisses. And maybe, just maybe think of your own words to speak to form an actual conversation that doesn't involve what you just saw / found on your phone? LOL!
All images from pixabay.com
If you'd like to get to know me a bit more, feel free to read my intro post
I'm still a bit new here, so I'm still exploring and learning this online community, which I love so far! Thanks for your time!
:)