It is all Connected

This morning I stopped at The Blue Moon for a coffee, a Pooh Bear latte (part of my yearly summer challenge to drink their specialty coffees). My youngest daughter got a breakfast sandwich. We sat on the couch, chatted a little about the rest of the day. But we were mostly quiet, partly because she was hungry (just got done with morning weights) and I was people watching.

The Blue Moon is a hot spot for the older generation to gather and chat while enjoying a coffee. Every morning you can find tables brought together and groups of people talking, laughing, just enjoying the fellowship of friends.  The afternoons are more subdued, that is when I try to go and write.

This morning there were about 10 older ladies at a table beside us. Conversations flying. Across the sitting area was a young boy, probably about 10 or 11 years old. He was by himself, I figure he was a grandson and tagged along with his grandmother. He had an empty juice bottle and some crumbled up napkins on the table. But what struck me was how he was just sitting there with an iPad in front of him, the volume loud enough I could hear it, but could not catch everything that was on the screen. And he didn’t move, at all. His face was illuminated by the screen. I watched as different colors shifted on his face.

Now, I know that a young boy may not feel comfortable talking with a group of older women, I get that. Besides the idea of reading or coloring or doing something active, he was silent and did not move at all. His silence struck me,  I see the way screens silence people, even in my classroom and even my home.

Let’s throw in AI just for the fun of it… Open AI just released GPT-Live which will listen and talk to you in real time. A quote from them, “We’re launching GPT‑Live, a new generation of voice models that make talking with AI feel much more like having a real conversation.”

I’m going to let this sit for a second…

I always wondered why the cool advancements in technology always seemed to correlate to making technology more human.

And now technology wants to silence you even more to other humans. 

Yesterday we (my wife and three youngest daughters) went to Lincoln to get new tennis rackets, had lunch together, and visited the children’s zoo. Yes, we had phones, taking pictures and sharing some of them on our family group chat. We even rode the little train around the zoo. My two oldest boys added a few comments about the memories they had of the train and the zoo when they were little.  We talked at lunch and had fun getting new tennis rackets for my two middle daughters (one chose some crazy colors for her strings).

As a dad it was a great day, it was filled with smiles, conversation, and laughter.

At the moment my house is pretty silent… and yes, we are all on screens. I am writing this blog post, I can’t see the screens of my daughters, but it is the classic position; phone in hand, face blank. My wife is working on her computer. The house is silent.

I am not against technology. I am concerned about its ability to silence us in lots of different ways, and what that will cost us as a society, as a person.

I would rather enjoy my coffee in the middle of the noise of people enjoying fellowship, then sipping on it in silence, screen illuminating my blank eyes.