THE ISOLATION OF BEING CONNECTED

How lonely and isolated have we become? It’s hard to answer that questions anymore with how connected we are. But connection may not be the best word to use.

Never before have we been able to share information the way we do today. We can tell people things they have never asked about. thanks to our status updates on Facebook or our tweets on Twitter.

We are glued to our smartphones so we can constantly stay in touch through texting and email. Then there is LinkedIn, Pinterest, Google Plus, and the list goes on.

We are saturated with information to the point where we find it hard to listen anymore. And when we speak it is no better. Our voice threatens to be drowned out by the noise of the information super highway.

So we are connected, but we are not communicating. We are speaking, but not listening well. We share our information with others and learn about their lives, but is it possible we are more alone than ever before?

Is this what technology has done to us?

In March of this year, Sherry Turkle, author of Alone Together: Why We Expect More From Technology and Less From Ourselves, gave a talk at TED2012 titled, “Connected, but alone?” It’s well worth your time. It’s challenging and quite frightening too, and goes toward answering the question of how isolated we have become.