What is life?  We constantly strive to better ourselves; to become perfected versions of who we once were.  We learn and grow and evolve not over centuries or millennia but on a daily, even second to second basis.  Our experiences change us and we become a little wiser each time.

We may choose to believe that the purpose of life, why we are here and our place in the universe is growth; the betterment of ourselves and the world. Is that also technologies purpose?  Does technology not update, enhance and advance along with us every day?  I’m not speaking specifically hardware or software growth, but on an interaction level.

In this five-part series I aim to question our view of technology and of life…

Part 1: Technically in Control

Technology has changed us.  That’s just a fact.  Our interactions with the world would not be what they are today without our little electronic inventions.  On a global scale we can connect in an instant and learn of something happening in places we’d never expect to go or even know about.  On a personal level, how we interact with those in our immediate lives has changed even more drastically.

We choose to text over face to face conversation.  Even phone calls have become faux pas.  Why is this?  It’s not that it’s easier to relay messages.  No, in fact I’ve heard time and time again, a five minute phone call could clear up the confusion of 30 minutes of text.   Then why do we continue to prefer texting?  It is because we seek perfection in every form of communication.  The ability to revise and filter our meaning before relaying it to others; that is what is appealing to us.  We can edit to perfection.

Texts are chosen over other mediums because we can manipulate them to maximize our own control.  This is true even in the manner of how we text.  Wording and emphasis placement, length, even response times are carefully thought out to try and minimize confusion or add meaning.

Technology even allows for time travel.  Kidding, but not really.  With the addition of the edit button on social media sites like Facebook, we are able to amend and make adjustments to public announcements in a fraction of a second before many even notice.  An added exclamation or smiley emoji can make all the difference in how a status is meant to be read.  With speech we don’t have that ability to go back and correct ourselves without the awareness of others.  Everything is within the moment and has a sense of permanence.

Even this post is carefully written and rewritten.  Editing and proofing, I find myself calculating what the perfect formation of words would be to get a specific point across.  I seek to control the reaction of my audience.

But nothing can be perfect.  In our search for perfection we’ve enabled new forms of miscommunication.  We begin to see poor wording or missed texts as intentional and begin to attribute our own meaning to someone else’s words.  These mutations are present in both biological and technological evolutions.

I’m not writing to resolve this matter but rather to bring to attention the subtle manipulation we all take part in. We are all, to a certain extent, control freaks.