Thumb wars

The battle lines have been drawn and the sides have been chosen.  Not since the generation gap of the ’60s and ’70s has there been such a communication breakdown. One, two, three, four…I declare a thumb war.

Has this ever happened to you?  You are out for dinner with family and friends and you are having a friendly conversation with ¬some¬one at the table. 

Suddenly you are shushed, told to “hang on just a second’ and you watch in silence as they stare down into their lap and start thumbing their device. 

For all intents and purposes your conversation is over.  You have to take a long pause while your dinner companions review what has been happening to all their friends in the five minutes since they were last texting each other.  Even if they need to season their food they will likely text a friend at the other end of the table to pass the salt.  

Or how about this? You are at a business meeting with several colleagues listening to a special guest speaker. The material is a little dry but you pay attention anyway and nod politely at the appropriate times. 

When you look around the boardroom table you notice that everyone else is staring at their lap while they mindlessly and rudely thumb their things.

At times like that I try to make eye contact with the poor, abandoned speaker so they will know there’s intelligent life out there.  Often they will shrug their shoulders in frustration as if to say, “What am I supposed to do now?”

Those hand-held, thumb-driven gizmos are all the rage these days.  There is no doubt they are handy and useful for some things but they are also addictive and it appears that an entire generation will soon be communicating silently and secretly with their thumbs.  Unless you are a thumber yourself you are out of the loop completely.

It’s no secret that I am somewhat resistant to this new form of communication and I view technology as a tool rather than a lifestyle. I Google and I process words and I even check my email from time to time but my thumbs are used for grasping things mostly and occasionally for hitchhiking. 

When I want to communicate I use my voice even though I’ve been told it is much too loud and disturbs the thumbers.
Lately I’ve noticed that even at high volumes I am just a voice in the wilderness. 

I know a few aging baby boomers who still take pleasure in one-on-one, face-to-face communication and toddlers under three will still talk to me but the thumbers leave me alone. Clever conversation has been reduced to a few muted characters on a display screen.

There has always been a generation gap between parents and their kids.  When I was growing up our hair was too long, our music was too loud and all our talk about peace, love and happiness fell on deaf ears. 

But even so, we did talk to our parents and everybody could listen in on the conversation. We couldn’t relate to each other but that was OK and we eventually worked it out and found things to talk about.

This time around there is a failure to communicate on a whole new level. 

Brief texts are being sent back and forth but who can be sure what they really mean or who sent them.  Using the anonymity of the virtual world, false identities can be created and destructive messages can be circulated.  People you don’t like can be excluded from your list of friends and parents are often absent from that virtual world.

What really troubles me is the fundamental change in the way people communicate. 

Forget about non-verbal clues, tone of voice and facial expressions – all you have to work with is 120 characters with numbers and punctuation combined in cutesy emoticons.

Forget about looking in your sweetheart’s eyes and whispering sweet nothings in her ear.  You can text her instead and forward it to all your friends.

I know resistance is futile. Many baby boomers who are still working have been forced to adapt to this new technology just to keep up with their younger co-workers. 

Eventually all the sentimental fools like me will fade away and the world will be rid of all that pesky conversation forever. 
All will be silent except for the faint sound of thumbs stroking keypads.

I need a thumber vacation.