Technology

I was listening to a song this morning called “Together all alone.”  It was from an album in the early 80’s given the title “Album of the Year.”  I had to order it from the US back then.  I will never forget getting it and I was so not disappointed.
One of the reasons I like that title and the song is it is very much about daily things.  A guy at school, a truck driver.  It could so easily be about me – a retiree or the guy next door – a labourer, or across the road, an electricity worker.  Or another neighbour, a tuckshop volunteer.  Or the shop owner, or the office worker or anyone really.  There is no profession, no matter how surrounded by people it is, that is immune to loneliness.
It has been said we live in a generation that has never been so connected.  I find the internet great.  When I want to know something I just Google it.  When I need something, more often than not someone has been there before me and posted it.  Collecting stamps, I know that writing letters is happening less and less.  Emails are there in seconds, and the response is generally given in the time it used to take for an original letter to be in the post.
I do not know that anything sums up how connected I now am than the use of smart phones.  Too say they have revolutionized the way I live is an understatement.  Forgetting my phone normally means a return trip to get it.  When that cannot happen, I feel the lesser for not having access to messages, emails, the internet and the phone.
Yet for all that, it has also been said that we have never lived in such a lonely generation.  I know I need people.  People not distracted by modern technology but people that are happy to put all aside when appropriate, and just talk.  Nothing says you have my attention like having someone’s attention without distractions.
I love how connected people are these days.  Yet I really do think the technology needs to remain a means to an end and not an end in itself.  I think I am like everyone in that I get a buzz from having something I put out there responded to.  It does not matter if it were an email, a message or a post.
The dependence on technology is understandable in the light of the often written about belief that it is a form of addiction.  I do not understand such things, but they say receiving responses triggers the release of a good substance in the body.  People often walk looking at their phones wanting that feeling to be repeated.
As good as that is, and no matter how much I like it or incredibly necessary it is, I cannot help feel I am missing out when living my life through technology.  There is no doubt in my mind that technology is great when it is a means of communication for people separated by distance, but I deceive myself if I think that alone justifies my existence. 
Nothing says I am with you like being with someone.