Commentary on Communication

It's really no secret that communication - real, solid communication that is - has fallen on the wayside in the past few years. Phone calls seem to be a thing of the past. Everything can be done through a machine now. No need to hear another person's voice or interact with another human being in any way. Isn't it great?

Not really. What inspired this post is the recent issue with the missing plane from Malaysian airlines. They recently decided that there were no survivors and and sent a TEXT to the families of the people on the plane. They sent them a TEXT MESSAGE. See anything wrong with this picture? Not even a phone call. Not even a letter, or a personal visit from a representative. Not to mention the fact that they had no real evidence that there were no survivors. What the heck is wrong with the world?

Technology has become out of control. Don't get me wrong, technology is great. It's fantastic, really. We can have friends around the world, meet people from new places without going anywhere, share stories and news, share information, share anything. However, it has made everything really impersonal. And that's where the issues come from. I'm sure most of us have heard the quote from Albert Einstein: "I fear the day that technology will surpass our human interaction." Luckily, he never got to see that day. Unluckily, we are all living in that day. And it can only get worse from here.

At what point will we realize that human interaction is what keeps us, well, human? There really is nothing better than sitting down with someone else, in person, sipping some coffee and sharing stories. Nothing will ever beat the feeling of hugging someone you haven't seen in a while, kissing the person you love, or looking into someone's eyes to really see what they are feeling. And it's scary to see how little these things happen sometimes.

Technology has also made us feel as if there is no time for interaction. Everything is so fast, so short now. Together, everyone has traveled from MySpace to blogging to Facebook to YouTube to Instagram to Twitter to Vine to Tumblr. The trend? Everything has gotten shorter. We don't have time for long posts any more, they had to be shortened to 140 characters. We don't have time to view full albums, so just post single pictures at a time so we can look at them. We don't have time to watch long videos, (5 minutes? Woah, way to long) so just make 6 second videos that we can watch. We don't have time to read long blog posts, so just reblog pictures and conversations we can laugh at. We are too impatient, too ready to move on to the next thing to sit down and talk to someone for more than 5 minutes. And that, my friends, is extremely sad. I want us all to try harder to engage in more human interactions, to spend less time worrying about our friends online and spend more time living outside of our gadgets. Until next time...

Scotland Part I

For some reason, today I got overly excited for my upcoming trip to Scotland. In a few short months I will be embarking on my first, independent, international adventure. I've only ever gone out of the country one other time, on my mission trip to Guatemala. That was awesome, but with this trip I will get to be more independent and see the world how and when I want to see it. And it's going to be awesome.

Fun fact about Scotland, number one: their national animal is the unicorn. How awesome is that? A whole country getting behind a fictitious animal. Granted, this is the country that probably makes a lot of tourist money off of good ol' Nessy. In my mind, Scotland seems like a mystical, mysterious, magical place. This land is so old and strange in my mind. There is a part of Scotland called the Shetland and Ornkey islands that literally seem untouched for centuries. And I am super excited to get to explore them and experience life away from, well, pretty much everything.

Scotland, especially those islands I mentioned above, once was the location of some Norse colonies (think Vikings and How to Train Your Dragon-esque culture). This was a polytheistic religion, meaning they believed in many different gods. A few gods of note from this indigenous religion are Odin, Thor, and yes, Loki. They have a creation story similar to that of the Bible, as the first man and woman were formed by the gods. A few of the gods found two trees torn out of the ground and formed the first people from them. Coincidentally, their names were Ask (the man) and Embla (the woman). Remind you of any other people who were the first created?

There is just so much rich history to this land that I am just beginning to research, and it is so exciting. I can't wait to share it with everybody. It will be an adventure of a lifetime. Until next time...