ILY?
By Darryl Gladstone

Almost thirty years ago, a freelance writer by the name of Marie Winn wrote an article admonishing society about the dangers of television. At the time, the television was the newest form of technology. It was the one commodity that every person or household had to own. Fast forward to the 21st century and this fetish with new technological media has not changed in the slightest way. Today, we keep our eyes keenly open, waiting for the next iPod to come out and wait on lengthy lines for the newest laptops or video game systems. This ‘New Media’ has become an almost necessary staple for existence. As economists would like to put it, technology is one of our ‘artificial needs.’ At the time, Winn may not have known it, but when she wrote “The Plug-In Drug”, she was, in foresight, warning us all of the dangers that may arise from all forms of new technology. One person who might have not been so surprised to see the modern effect of technology would have been well renowned German philosopher, Martin Heidegger. Long before Winn cautioned everyone about the problems the television could cause, in 1955, Martin Heidegger criticized and ‘questioned’ the foundations upon which new technology was built. Through countless works and essays, he made the controversial claim that technology posed a threat to what he referred to as ‘the being.’ In essence, he said the rise of technology, if mishandled, posed a substantial threat to the basic elements necessary for real human existence. Looking at the way the current general populace has replaced emotional forms of communication like face-to- face conversation with such things as mass texting and instant messaging, one finds it hard not to agree with the arguments Winn and Heidegger proposed about the television and technology as a whole, respectively. Although New Media, such as the cellular phone and the internet, has expanded the basic channels for communication, it’s hard not to notice the adverse effects it has had on one of the essential components that make people like you and me uniquely human: the ability to intimately communicate.

One of the very unique qualities that we, as humans, possess is the ability to communicate in complex ways. We speak with many different tongues and languages and ascribe meanings and emotions to certain words. By nature, we have a need to communicate. This ability to emotionally communicate with each other is the one thing that separates us from the rest of the ecosystem, and makes us uniquely human. Heidegger affirms this notion in his famous text Being and Time. He describes the human as someone who is “fixed, embedded and immersed in the physical, literal, and tangible day to day world” (Hornsby). In essence, one must be in touch with the world to be what Heidegger describes as a real ‘being’. One of the key aspects that keep us in touch with the everyday tangible world Heidegger refers to is the simple act of communication. However in an age, where communication seems to be dying, how can we achieve real humanity: humanity that involves being in touch with the tangible world as opposed to the personal worlds we create for ourselves as a result of our fetish with technology?

I. The Human Fetish

In an age of innovation, technological advances, specifically New Media, have changed the way we communicate; ‘New Media’ has become our crutch for communication and information. Books, newspapers, and magazines are no longer our pastime friends. Instead of some one on one time with Gabriel Garcia Marquez or Toni Morrison, Perez Hilton’s blog is now our most revered reading material. ‘Meeting up after school’, a once common activity, is now replaced by ‘I’ll just IM or text you later.’ This wide array of new technology has expanded our basic forms of communication beyond just a simple in-person conversation or a mailed letter. It has, without a doubt, made reaching another person easier and quicker than it was in a pre-industrial age. In fact, this new form of technology is so efficient in helping us communicate, that we often sometimes ignore the basic forms of communication and information we used to rely upon.

Today, we are so transfixed by New Media and its advantages that we no longer feel the need or want to be in touch with the tangible world. In the Will to Technology & The Culture of Nihilism, Arthur Kroker describes this numbing effect that New Media has on today’s society by describing an interestingly disturbing scene in San Francisco Airport:

Just landed at SFO, Palm in hand, I check my email while waiting for my bags. Everyone else is doing the same. A corporate lawyer with that Palo Alto computer-burn look is saying something about trademarks and intellectual property rights into his cell phone…San Francisco… digitally has reached that point of economic maturity where all the algorithms necessary for b-to-b commerce and struggles for market share have mutated the business cycle beyond drudge work to aesthetics. (33)

Scarily, the scenario Kroker describes, is not too far from an accurate description of how most advance societies all across the world, act today in the face of technological advancement. Our fetish with our technological toys tends to help us distance ourselves from the world around us. Unfortunately, although some people may see this as harmless, our once occasional distancing has seemed to turn into a regular routine: a regular routine that seems to pose a danger to the current generation and generations ahead.

II. Its Wide-Scale Effect: The Entire Human Society

Of course, the ideas of New Media and the rise of technology find itself more relevant to the current younger population. 80’s babies and 90’s babies, unlike the children of previous generations, are born into an age where such technologies as the internet, cell phones, and MP3 players are easily accessible and more understood. Consequently, possession of such devices usually becomes the norm. As opposed to previous generations, where letters and face-to-face conversations were the norms for communication, the younger generation find themselves in an age where using such things as cell phones, instant messaging, and the internet are the most convenient and respected forms of communication. However, as opposed to the unique characteristics that face-to-face conversation entails, technical communication tends to be void of most of these things.

Face-to-face conversation, an activity among friends that seems to be on a decline, includes several characteristics that make it more intimate than its counterpart. When speaking to a loved one or a friend in person, we get the chance to observe and study such things as his/her facial expressions, body language, and the tone they use in reaction to certain comments and statements made. Because such aspects as these are present, this form of communication tends to be more impulsive. The thought and need of restraining what we say is more of a secondary nature than it is a primary one. As a result, we have to deal with more consequences when we speak this way. It helps us develop real relationships that require gaining knowledge of the other person. Instead of developing relationships based upon arbitrary ideas, through this form of communication, help us develop these relationships based upon an intimate development process, one that relies upon a real personal form of communication.

Unfortunately, this is not the situation among the younger people of today or, to be more apt, the e-generation. Our world of communication and the friendships based upon it rely heavily upon New Media and the way we use it. In fact, Baruch College is a great example of this. With a student body that consists of more than 3,000 students, internet friendships are the trend for most people who attend. In an attempt to socialize with one another or to be caught up on class work, students develop relationships with their peers through various networking sites. Networking sites, a phenomenon best exemplified by the infamous MySpace and Facebook, have become our main channels for communication. On any instance a student at Baruch is more likely to text, chirp, IM, Facebook Chat, or e-mail a friend than they are likely to actually see that person face-to-face during the day. This form of communication is inherently dangerous to how we interact with each other as beings.

Students, like the millions of other people who use New Media as their main avenue for communicating, generally fail to realize the lack of intimacy and real personal connections in a lot of their ‘relationships’ with others. Let’s take texting for example. Texting, ‘bff Jill’ and grandma’s favorite way of ‘kit,’ is how most ‘close’ friends talk to each other on a regular basis. By reading the former statement about bff Jill kit with grandma, any person familiar with ‘text-speak’ would understand that texting is grandma and her best friend Jill’s favorite way of keeping in touch. However, if you look it at a second time, one might realize that the statement has no real significant value. If an employer says we’ll ‘kit’ after an interview, what would one say in response? Texting has reduced the English language to various short and arbitrary abbreviations that, at times, we often forget what such words and phrases originally meant. A great example of this is the recent tendency to end text messages with the new phrase ‘ily.’ I Love You, three words that use to mean so much, have been reduced to, if read out loud, 'illy'. What emotion is displayed with ily when it’s simply typed into a text message? Furthermore, how does one emotionally respond to receiving a text message that says ‘ily?’ Even more disturbing than our reduction of I Love You to ily, are the reasons we sometimes resort to using the ‘cute’ little expression.

The e-generation not only seems to ignore intimacy as a part of their relationships, they also seemed to be at times petrified of it. As mentioned before, face-to-face conversations hold us accountable for our actions. Essentially, we have to live with the consequences that may come about as a result of the unique qualities that face-to-face conversations possess. However, in a world where we can just IM a person or e-mail a person, which allows editing that erases all traces of first thoughts, consequences are avoidable. The pain one experiences when he or she receives an impulsive, appalled, and disgusted reaction in response to the words ‘I love you’ is now hardly experienced anymore. Instead of telling a person these special words in person, one can avoid the pain by texting that person ily. It provides a safety net and acts as a safeguard to that person’s feelings as well as protects the ‘relationship’. Sadly, this is how most of the e-generation thinks today. Instead of living out real substantive and meaningful relationships with people, they live out these mechanical and planned ones that don’t reflect the hard reality of life.

This detachment from reality and the ability to really connect with the world is what Heidegger discusses in many of his works. In his essay, “Question Concerning Technology,” Heidegger describes this decrease of intimacy as a new indulgence in ‘nihilistic’ culture. Our will to indulge in technology turns us away from our natural ability to be empathic to a sort of calculative thought. As opposed to being more intimate and personal, we are more mechanical and calculative. Renowned philosopher from Tulane University, Michael Zimmerman, explains Heidegger’s theory perfectly, stating that:

For modern commercial-technological humanity, nothing is "sacred." Everything has its price; everything can be calculated and evaluated according to the economic interests. In the technological age, however, instead of conforming to the natural order, people force nature to conform to their needs and expectations. Whenever nature proves unsatisfactory for human purposes, people reframe it as they see fit. For Heidegger, such technological ''reframing" compels entities to be revealed in inappropriate ways. (207)

The reframing that Heidegger refers to is the trend among the e-generation today. Through the use of New Media, modern society avoids the natural order of things by indulging in a form of communication that doesn’t deal with all the consequences that natural life does. Our reframing of the way things are has even gone further that now it includes reframing ourselves to avoid consequences. To avoid the pain of rejection, a natural occurrence in life, we reframe our being and who we are as a person on the various networking sites that are available on the World Wide Web. We take the time out to plan and perfectly calculate the person we want to be viewed as. Also known as avatars, these ‘perfect’ and idealistic embodiments of ourselves help us feel accepted among the people we aspire to be. In this sense, the tangible world we lose touch with doesn’t include only the people around us, but ourselves. This way of thinking, where we go about achieving our desired end without addressing the means by which we do it, is the calculative thought and nihilistic culture that Zimmerman and Heidegger refer to.

One of the more pressing issues here is dealing with the fact that there is a problem with being nihilistic and thinking calculatively. What happens in a world where everyone finds it normal to think in a utilitarian way? What happens when nihilism is the norm, and the way we go about achieving our desired ends is ignored? The answer is: we become today. Almost seventy years ago, Albert Einstein created what was perceived as a ground-breaking form of technology: the atomic bomb. In the wake of the excitement with this progressive form of weaponry, a small town in Japan, Hiroshima, was bombed. The point here is not to engage in anecdotal entertainment, but to convey what the world is like in a utilitarian state of mind. The same calculative and nihilistic logic that we use today is the same logic that the United States government used when it killed and maimed millions of innocent people in Hiroshima. They bombed these helpless people with the idea that a few people’s lives were expendable when it came to technological advancement. Although we modernly judge the actions taken during that period, we are no different. Even though the gap between murder and deceiving others and ourselves, for our own personal gain, may seem far, the basic logic might as well be the same. Our engagement with technology has made us mindlessly emotionless and more importantly non-sympathetic. Will we ever realize lying to ourselves and reframing the world is just an ignorant ploy for avoiding reality?

III. It’s Local Effect: the Chain Effect on the Family Unit

As mentioned before, humans are a naturally communicative species. Most of the times we use this natural ability to communicate for survival, companionship, or social cooperation. A perfect example of this natural human interaction is the family unit. The family unit, the primary source for most human communication, can be seen as a starting point for how most people learn how to communicate with the world. The way our mother and our father behave and communicate with each other provides a basic template of how we should behave and communicate with other people out their in the world. Well, at least that used to be the case. With each passing age, the family unit seems to become more and more less of a communicative haven then it used to be. Most of this predicament can be blamed on technological advancement and the rise of New Media.

In the 1960s, the introduction of the epic television set changed lives all around. Every family and household had to ‘have’ a television. At the time, television was New Media. Like current New Media, it expanded channels for information, and efficiently connected people all around the world. Initially, the television was perceived to be a pastime event that brought families together. However, as opposed to the utopian vision imagined proposed for the device so long ago, a mindless obsession with the television also became a catalyst for damaging intimacy and empathy among the human population.

“The Plug-In Drug”, an essay by Marie Winn, discusses this issue and the adverse effects the television had on the family unit. As Winn described it, the television did indeed act as a device that brought the family together in one room but it “…[destroyed] the special quality that distinguishes one family from another, a quality that depends to a great extent on what a family does…and [the] shared activities it accumulates” (353). Almost fifty years later, after the creation of the television set, this problem still persists, just in a new form: New Media.

The internet, cell phones, instant-messaging, texting, blogging, iPods, iPhones are all devices that each family unit has now become accustomed to ‘needing’. Like the television back then, New Media, has made less quality time for intimate family relationships. A son bops his head to an iPod up in his room while a mother spends three hours on her Blackberry conversing with Becky. This is the usual scenario played out by the modernized family unit. The family, which used to be a starting point for communicative development, no longer fulfills that task. Although all members of the family live in the same house, they have no real connection with each other. As long as dinner is served, the rent is paid, and everyone lives in harmony, in-depth and personal communication is no longer that important. The localized unit of human communication, the family, is no longer any different from two strangers passing each other by on the street. The same way we interact with the outside world is unfortunately the same we behave with our family members now.

IV. Conclusion

Looking at the way New Media has flourished, one can say that an argument about the adverse effects of technological advancements, based upon the idea that New Media has decreased our will to be intimate and sensitive, ignores its positive effects. Indeed, the speed of e-mail, texting, and the internet makes communication a much faster task than it used to be before. One might even say that our newly attained efficient way of communication outweighs the less efficient way we interact with each other. However, one has to look deeper than the outer surface to realize the inherent dangers surrounding New Media. In a world of desensitization and calculative thought, there is no room for empathy. We are willing to sacrifice people in the name of our desires. The avatars online, although a blatant deception, are norms. It doesn’t matter that we deceive the people on the other end as long as we’ve gotten the attention we so desperately seek. Lying to everyone about who we really are doesn’t emotionally prick us anymore. If lying to or own selves is no longer problematic for us, will it be long before we start deeming other acts acceptable simply because it gave us what we want?

Furthermore, advocates of New Media, fail to recognize that such devices as cell phones and the world web are not as accessible to everyone as it may seem. In fact, take a look at New York City. Pay phones, which used to stand on about every corner, are slowly vanishing. In just a few months, all televisions must be ‘high-definition’ by law. Technological advancement has become such an obsession that it’s reached the legal sphere. If this is possible, what happens to those who can’t afford to ‘obey the law?’ Are they then reduced to criminals or social pariahs who can’t afford to be normal like everyone else?

Despite its efficiency and its aesthetic appeal among society, New Media poses a danger to the way we as a society interact with each other. Do I Love You or do ILY? Am I really the person you’ve wanted to meet your entire life or was that just my Facebook profile? Indeed, most, if not all, individuals are guilty of immersing themselves in a distant world they create for themselves, one that New Media so conveniently assists. However, sometimes one has to wonder if any of us really want to be humans consciously in touch with the real word or if we’re all fighting a long-term battle for the role of R2-D2 in the next Star Wars movie?

Works Cited

Hornsby, Roy. “What Heidegger Means by Being-In-The-World.” Weblog Entry. Today’s Reality Tomorrow. 11/24/08 http://royby.com/philosophy/pages/dasein.html
Kroker, Arthur. The Will To Technology & The Culture of Nihilism: Heidegger, Nietzsche & Marx. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004.
Winn, Marie. “The Plug-In Drug.” Patterns for College Writing. Eds. Laurie G Kirsner and Stephen R. Mandell. 10th ed. New York: Bedford/ St. Martins, 2007. 351-58
Zimmerman, Michael. Heidegger’s Confrontation With Modernity: Technology, Politics, Art. Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1990.