Gregory Koberger

I have the same routine every morning. I get up, pour myself a cup of coffee, and sit down in front of my computer. By the time my mug is empty again, I know what's going on with a few hundred of my closest friends.

Social “utilities” are changing the way we communicate. No longer do we have to talk to each other; we now talk at each other. We narcissistically broadcast what we're reading, feeling, thinking and doing to a world that didn't necessarily ask. It works better this way- we only have to say something once, and everyone we know can read and comment on it.

Innovation is the process of finding a problem, and fixing it. We're past the point where we're forced to innovate just to survive- now, much of our improvements aim to make tasks faster, easier and more efficient. As we do this, however, we continually tend to cut out human elements.

Remote Possibilities

Not too long ago, watching television meant getting to the couch before the show started to air. A minute late meant missing a minute of the show. The same went for everyone else in the house who wanted to watch the same thing.

While nobody would argue television ranks among the most social of activities (Ann Landers once said that “television has proved that people will look at anything rather than each other”), historically it's had a few things going for it. Namely, time and location. A show would happen at a specific time and would take place wherever the nearest television happened to be.

The invention of VCRs helped mitigate many time related obstacles, but not without a struggle- one of the best things about VCRs being phased out is that the clichéd “programming a VCR” jokes died with them.

TiVo had the answer. Digital Video Recorders, or DVRs, changed the way television was watched. Pausing, rewinding and fast forwarding live television quickly became standard, and tapes were rendered obsolete. Scheduling was automated- it didn't matter what time a show started, or if the game ran late.

So, time was no longer a factor. In fact, watching late was rewarded in the form of being able to fast forward through commercials- much to the chagrin of advertising sales departments relying on Nielsen ratings. Consumers no longer had to sync their lives to the broadcast schedule- television could be watched when it was most convenient. Family members had one less reason to crowd around a television together, since everyone could watch when it worked best for them. While one person might want to watch after getting out of work or school, someone else might prefer waiting until before going to bed.

Even more recently, the Internet has speed up enough that shows can be downloaded faster than they can be watched. As a result, shows traditionally only found on a television screen can be watched from any device that can connect to the Internet. Desktops, laptops and even cell phones are slowly replacing televisions. Despite initially shunning it, content providers have embraced the new medium. The first step was to offer paid-for downloads, much like the music industry's response to Napster. A few days after a show aired, an iPod-sized version appeared on iTunes for a few dollars. Not long after, every major television station started offering legal, ad-supported versions of shows just hours after they aired.

This advancement removed the last obstacle associated with watching television- location. No longer was the living room the central hub; television could be watched in any room, at work, or even in a car.

So, the already arguably antisocial activity was stripped of almost anything that could be considered social. It's no doubt more efficient, however this “whenever, wherever” mentality has lead to modern day television being seen as even more of a solo activity.

Truthiness

Back when they first came out, televisions had three channels and radios had just AM stations. Everyone pretty much got their news and entertainment from the same source. The next day, it served as a topic of conversation. Now, we have hundreds of channels or stations to choose from at any given time. “Did you see the game?” requires a few more details- there wasn't just one game on; every game was.

We can listen to any sort of music we want. Indie music that almost nobody has ever heard of is just a mouse click away, and online radio stations are custom tailored to a persons specific tastes. No longer do we pick a genre to listen to, we create our own. Never again will there be a unifying band like The Beatles- taste in music is too diverse for that now.

The Internet has gone a long way in allowing people to watch, listen and read what they want. Before, news sources may have been biased or wrong- but at least everyone got the same biased or wrong news. It's impossible to debate a topic now that each side is starting with different facts.

The Internet has made it extremely easy to filter content. This takes the concept of confirmation bias to new heights- by reading only news sources that agree with a certain way of thinking, it's easy to mistake opinions for universal truths.

When this happens, the ability to rationally debate a topic is lost. After being surrounded by people who all voice and argue the same exact points, it's easy to consider anyone with a dissenting view as inferior or stupid. And it's impossible for a legitimate debate to happen if neither side has any intellectual respect for their opponent. When this happens, no longer is there a need to explain opinions- debates just turn into rounds of insults. Since both sides are arguing facts from biased sources, it's a lot like trying to prove a religious point to an atheist by quoting the Bible.

Debates seem to be more about proving the other person wrong than proving ourselves right. The point of a debate should be to foster a better understanding of opposing opinions, however people are now so convinced that they are right that they don't bother to listen.

Websites and online news sources are competing for page views, so there's little incentive to be unbiased. After all, what would you rather read? “Criticism of George Bush's Policies Regarding Ukraine”, or “Top Ten Reasons George Bush Is The Worst President of All Time”? Political stances are irrelevant; the latter is going to get more hits. We tend to embrace negativity, and nothing does negativity better than the Internet. As access to negative outlooks and opinions becomes more prevalent, we as a society begin to believe it.

It's not just political, either. We can find people online who are just like us, and have the same obscure hobbies. Relationships are traditionally a game of give and take. You might go to the Yankees game this weekend, but next weekend your friend has to go with you to that movie you've been wanting to see. This is because friendships have traditionally been based on factors like location and mutual friends. Now, we can cherry pick people who are just like us. We never have to branch out, we never have to try something new.

A study at Carnegie Mellon found that increased use of the Internet “was associated with declines in participants' communication with family members in the household, declines in the size of their social circle, and increases in their depression and loneliness.” Friends on Facebook and followers on Twitter may mean we always have someone to talk to- but these aren't real friends. They only know the persona we craft for ourselves, and we only know what they want us to know. We miss out on each others imperfections and differences- which are what make us human in the first place.

The Cake Is A Lie

The year was 1972, and Nolan Bushnell had just started his company. His vision was to get people to spend time with each other. He took “traditional board games, which are highly social experiences in the home,” and brought them up to speed with technology. Interestingly, the currently antisocial nature of video games has put his status as the “father of electronic gaming” at ironic odds with his initial intentions.

The company he started? We know it as Atari. Specifically, they are famous for creating Pong, one of the very first mainstream video games. But Atari's true legacy is bringing video games into American homes.

So, if the original goal behind video games was to bring people together- what happened? As Bushnell put it, “the idea is to create games in which the conversations among the people are as important as the gameplay itself.” However, innovation in the gaming world seems to be unintentionally doing it's best to keep that from happening.

When video games moved from arcades to living rooms, multi-player mode preserved some of the social nature that early video games strove for. And when online multi-player games became popular, people heralded it as an advancement for the social gaming cause. There was never an excuse to play video games alone, since there was always someone somewhere who wanted to play. Wandering around World of Warcraft with hundreds of thousands of people you'll never physically encounter, however, isn't a real replacement for real human contact.

As humans, we've always been a 'social group.' A large part of our brains are dedicated to social interaction, and we've grown up being shaped by them. Everything about us- from our emotions to our language to our cognition come straight from our exchanges with other human beings. From the day we are born, we are surrounded by others.

Simply put, we are programmed to crave human interaction.

Artificial Intelligence has the ability to mimic social interactions. We're a long way off from having a robots for girlfriends, however it doesn't necessarily have to be that obvious. Most people turn on video games because they're bored or want something to do, not because they're lonely- but that doesn't mean they don't unconsciously reap the benefits.

Another adverse affect of video games is that the repetitive play affects how humans develop emotionally and physically. When playing video games, we are following rules that the game creators have implemented. Avatars can't go too far to the left or right, and game play doesn't allow for any significant decisions. While the restrictions vary based on the game, there's no denying that even the most robust games still have a script that needs to be followed. Games don't leave room for MacGyver-like creativity- there's a finite, predetermined amount of ways to accomplish any given predefined task.

Professor Ryuta Kawashimi, of the Tohoku University in Japan, did a study comparing teenagers playing video games to teenagers doing math problems. The result was that the video games didn't stimulate the brain's frontal lobe- a area of the brain that deals with memory, learning and emotion. Just as importantly, the frontal lobe is behind the repression of anti-social impulses. Adding to this research was Doctor Tonmoy Sharma, of the Institute of Psychiatry, who said that “computer games do not lead to brain development because they simply require the repetition of simple actions and have more to do with developing quick reflexes than carrying out more mentally challenging activities such as forward planning or analysis.”

Recent attempts at social gaming, such as the game Guitar Hero and the Wii gaming platform, have had success in overcoming many of the social road blocks that plague video games. However, they have unfortunately been met with harsh criticism from self-described “hardcore gamers.” “Casual gamers are ruining our video games” has become a battle cry for many video game enthusiasts, who are worried about grandparents and little sisters invading their turf.

So what's Nolan Bushnell up to these days? He recently started a restaurant chain, uWink. The tables double as video screens, and patrons are encouraged to play games together. In his words, “social games aren't sitting in boxer shorts in your basement. It's being out, having fun, being able to hi-five people around the table.” Despite his best intentions, however, it's hard to miss the irony that his human-interaction-centered restaurants are completely without waiters.

The Price is Right

When you walk into a supermarket and glance down your list, odds are pretty good that a good portion of what you need can be found towards the back of the store. It's clear why- it's in the supermarkets best interest to get customers to walk past as many things as possible, in hopes of filling their carts with things they didn't know they needed. After all, “two-thirds of what we buy in the supermarket we had no intention of buying," according to consumer expert Paco Underhill, author of Call of the Mall. The impulse buys near the registers, the fancy end displays, and the kids products at children's eye level are all guilty.

Not all inconveniences encountered while shopping are some sort of underhanded marketing ploy to pawn extra items off on unsuspecting customers, however. Many issues are just limitations of the medium- markets exist in the physical world, and in the physical world every item can occupy just one space at a time. So, let's say someone goes into a market looking to bake a cake. From this perspective, it would make sense to have the milk and eggs next to the batter, and the frosting and candles right near by. However, someone making breakfast might expect the eggs to be near the bacon. There's no way to group things in a physical space according to everyone's needs- so customers are stuck weaving in and out of isles to collect items on their lists.

Another issue with physical stores is that they can only occupy so much space. For example, this means that even the biggest book stores can only hold around 200,000 separate titles- a small number when you consider that the Library of Congress alone receives 22,000 new items every day. Traditional stores have to fit everything they want to sell into one physical location- and more often than not, there's not enough space for everything.

The Internet has changed this. It's easy to find exactly what we're looking for quickly and easily, without having to walk past rows of unnecessary items. We can avoid potential impulse buys begging for attention, and have what we need purchased faster than we could park a car at a “brick-and-mortar” store.

When using an online store, everything can be exactly where we want them to be- items can be sorted in an infinite amount of ways, and can be placed next to an infinite amount of relevant items. A book about the history of technology no longer has to decide on one permanent home- it can be in both the technology section and history section, as well as a group of books about Microsoft or a list of a certain consumers favorite books.

One of the biggest advantages of an online store is the range of things it can offer. Amazon.com started off as a book store, however it now boasts an inventory of everything from jewelery to motorcycles to furniture. An impressive feat, given that your local Borders has trouble finding shelf space for even a small percentage of books.

Over forty years ago, Time Magazine wrote that "Remote shopping, while entirely feasible, will flop - because women like to get out of the house, like to handle merchandise, like to be able to change their minds." They were clearly wrong about it flopping, of course- Amazon.com alone made over $19 billion in revenue in 2008. It's cheaper to order online- the best deals are easy to find. It's also faster, since we don't even have to stand up.

Sexist undertones aside, though, they have a point. How many things do you touch when you go to a store? All five senses get a workout, as opposed to just pointing and clicking items on a website. When you walk into a store, how many people do you encounter? Even if you don't run into someone you know at your local Walmart, you encounter hundreds- if not thousands- of people. The cashier checking you out. The associate who helps you find what you're looking for. Even the lady who pushes you out of the way to grab the last Tickle Me Elmo (or, perhaps more relevantly, the last iPod) counts as human interaction.

On the surface, these people don't seem to contribute anything to your life. In fact, a pretty powerful case could be made that they actually detract. All too often, we ignore how important any sort of contact with humans is. Much like with the waiter-less restaurants, it's way too easy to assume we're doing ourselves a favor by missing out on the boredom of a story from someone who took “how are you doing?” way too literally, or the embarrassment of buying condoms from the cute cashier.

We have short tempers, and the Internet's take on restraining orders- the “block” feature- is partially to blame. The more time we spend online, the more we figure out ways to block the annoying people out of our lives. No matter how hard we try, though, there simply is no way to completely block out all annoyances- and we're quickly losing the patience to deal with them.

The Art Of Conversation

Ninety-three percent of all communication is nonverbal. That means only seven percent of the impact of what we say is determined by the words we choose- factors such as voice quality and gestures determine the rest. So when we move our conversations away from a physical venue, we lose a lot of what we're saying. The way our eyes shift when we lie. The way our voice cracks when we're nervous. The way a slight smile forms at the corner of our mouths when we're secretly happy.

With computers, we have to tell the person we're talking to when we laugh or smile. It's easy to tell the difference between a real and a fake laugh, but "lol" looks the same no matter what the intentions.

Just like anything else, conversation is a skill. Technology has given us an easy out, though. We can carefully measure our words. We can take as much time as we need to respond. This is bad for the art of conversation- like any skill, we need to practice. Remember that talkative person from the store who used an innocent “how are you?” as a launching pad for a rant about her neighbor? Yes, it was boring. But just like those many hours you spent at Little League practice, it was necessary. Eventually, we'll be up to bat in a real game- and those mundane drills we endured in practice will prove themselves invaluable.

Conversation has become a way to exchange information in as efficient of a manner as possible. Why take twenty words to say what you can in ten? And even then, can you get it down to five? The answer is yes, you can. There's not much you can't say, with enough optimization, in just a few words.

We currently live in a society that's made an art form out of packing as much information as possible into 160 characters. Our idea of improving communication in a digital era seems to be to shorten it. We went from emails to instant messaging to texting. We started with blogging, and now we microblog. In the past, we measured what we wrote in pages. Now we measure it in characters.

When we put our message in writing, 40 percent of what we say is misunderstood. So already, our message is at a disadvantage- imagine how much more we lose when jargon like “u”, “ttyl” and “bbl” pass as legitimate communication.

It may not seem like a big deal. But there's a clear difference between looking into the eyes of someone that means the world to you and having them say “I love you”, and getting a text saying “ILY.”

What's Next

This hasn't been an argument against innovation- undoubtedly a lot of good has come from technology. This is an argument against how we've adopted the same attitude towards living life as Henry Ford did towards making automobiles- we've turned it into an assembly line. Efficiency has become our ultimate goal.

We need to get away from our reliance of instant gratification. We grumble when the Internet is down or our plane is delayed, rather than take that time to reflect on how awesome technology is.

There was an episode of the television show Scrubs with an overweight girl with health problems, looking for liposuction. She refused to listen to her doctor, instead opting to take advice from a WebMD inspired application on her cellphone. Finally, her doctor got fed up with her need for the easy way out.

“Life is scary, get used to it. There are no magical fixes, it's all up to you. So get up off your keister, get out of here, and go start doing the work.”

“What if it's too hard?” asked the girl, looking up from her cell phone for the first time.

“Nothing in this world that's worth having comes easy.”

And that's the real problem with on demand television, fast food and instant messaging. When we do come across something worth working for, we don't have the desire or ability to put in the effort.

Our economy is down, because we bought houses we didn't earn. Our divorce rates are up, since we won't put in the work.

I'm far from being against technology- we just need to be careful about how we utilize it. There are studies that back everything I have said, and there are studies that say it's complete nonsense. The fact is, we're dealing with a soft science- the factors at play aren't exactly quantitative. Maybe I'm right, or maybe I'm just afraid of change. After all, people have heralded the death of our society with every new technology- everything from books to phones to radio to television- yet we've turned out just fine. So maybe it's not bad, just different.

Think of it this way, though. We're living in the most technologically advanced society mankind has ever witnessed. We have almost anything we could possibly want. Life, on paper, is much better than it was twenty, fifty, a thousand years ago. Yet despite all of this, less and less people seem to be happy.

Even though the world is getting smaller, we're drifting further apart.