 |
| "Cyborg" Retrieved from "Cyborg Test" by Hurlburt Under, Computational Thinking 2011. |
Cell phone alarm goes off, I grudgingly take my phone from under my blanket. Turn alarm off.
I
wake up, check Twitter, Emails and WhatsApp.
I
get out of bed, get ready for class, I check Twitter.
I
prepare breakfast, eat, I check Twitter and Facebook.
By
7 a.m. I know what happened in the world while I was sleeping, who tried to
contact me, who needs something from me, who do I have to call or email back.
I
am available and interacting fully with the world, regardless of time zones or
continental boundaries; every person is a vibration of my phone away from
talking to me. Any place, any time, my phone always on me, I always on my
phone.
Living
in what many pundits have called the “digital era” is as complex as it is
challenging. Just by having access to a computer and Internet our identities
are spilled across social media sites and search engines. We learn to hold
different fronts for the different ways of social interaction we engage in. One
person becomes three, four, five, as we navigate our way through the web.
Social
interaction has become an ambiguous concept, as has “availability,” and the
capacity to be “reachable” or “connected.”
What
used to mean face-to-face encounters, or the result of them, shifted to a
completely different arena, encompassing a whole new world of technology and
compressing time and space into a network that has taken interconnectedness to
a new level. We live in a sphere of constant social interaction that is no
longer limited, no longer constrained to some casual encounters and specific
places. We live in a sphere where time and space wither, pushing people to
become emails, usernames, passwords, avatars and cell phone numbers.
We
have grown to be cyborgs, our technology becoming an extension of ourselves.
Becoming ourselves.
We
learn—and have—to be everywhere at one place.
Detaching
myself from this routine for 48 hours seemed hard, not because I thought I
could not live without the constant interaction with the outside world through
my phone, but because it tormented me to think someone would need something
from me and would not be able to reach me, “what ifs” flooding my mind (“What
if Twitter collapses and I don’t know?!” no, not really, but you get the
point).
The
first couple of hours were tense, a feeling of disconnect, of wanting but not
being able to do something, to talk to someone.
Anxiety,
nervousness, a persistent fear of the worst happening, all were part of a
roller-coaster of emotions that tried to control me. For moments it felt as if
I were in a consistent state of fight or flight, analyzing my environment to
somehow get to know what was happening in the world and be able to react
accordingly.
Mere
hours after the fast started I found myself talking to people about
their lives—something I usually know just by reading their Twitter feeds, their
blogs or Facebook pages—with genuine interest. I started noticing the way their
voice tone changes when they talk about different things, their facial
expressions, their words and experiences as they relate to the overall context.
I
was more sensitive, more aware, more concentrated and focused on the here and
now. I was not only looking to the world but also feeling it and thinking about
it to an almost obsessive level, without having Twitter or Facebook to lull
away my thoughts or quiet my thinking.
I
was like a newborn, a newcomer, seeing and experiencing Loyola, Chicago and its
people in ways I hadn’t before. Everything was brighter and sharper than I had
ever cared to notice.
By
the second day I was no longer dreading the silence that permeated my
“technology-less” days, I was dreading the time when I would have to go back to
the constant vibration, beeping and twinkling of my phone. I looked at it with
both disdain and reject, not wanting to be reached, contacted, friended,
followed, googled, linked, emailed or called.
Returning
to technology was overwhelming at first as I was no longer able to enjoy the
silence and calmness of the “disconnected world.” With time thoughts were
lulled again, images softened and noises quieted as I returned to my cyclical
routine of consistently patrolling the web, as if it hadn’t survived without
me.
Reality
is that the world did not change because I was not “online.” Everything was the
same it was before I “left.”
[As
I wrote this post, I checked Facebook 18 times and Twitter 24]
Esther Daniela Castillejo
Esther Daniela Castillejo
