Mobile Technology Changes the Social Hierarchy
Is the text message more improtant than the messenger?
Technology Changes the Mood on Campus
Standing in front of the library on a college campus, one may expect to see kids hanging out in couples and groups near the library. Yet that is not what occurs. Every single student walks alone playing with their cell phone. They don’t even talk; they either text message or check their messages. There may be one absorbed couple walking, holding hands, bumping into walls, etc . They aren’t gazing into each other’s eyes though; they are listening to their iPods.
The change in collegiate culture generates an aha moment. Not aha as in the recent study where researchers warn that young people with an inflated sense of self tend to have more interest in their hair products than in emotionally intimate bonds. No, it is more a sense of validation.
The Age of Technoverts
According to the famed Myers-Briggs personality test, introverts comprise a minority 20 to 40 percent of the American population and theoretically, they’re overly sensitive to stimuli. That’s why they’re good with detail, and are rarely bored. They’re also particularly gifted at creative and technical pursuits. One could characterize the advent of electronic over human stimulation as a new personality type: the technovert.
All of their lives, technoverts are told to smile, to put away that book, to “fight for their right to party.” Immersed in reading, they often missed their name called in the dentist’s office or by their science teacher assigning the project on tapeworms. It wasn’t that they didn’t like people or even that they didn’t want company; it’s just that a technovert sent out on a beer run at 2 a.m. was not coming back.
Technoverts had other fish to fry. Famed Apple entrepreneur, Steve Jobs, said in a commencement address to Stanford University, “Don't let the noise of other's opinions drown out your own inner voice.” The media mocked Al Gore in 2000 for his distinctly aloof and stiff persona. Hedy Lamarr, the Hollywood bombshell who helped design and patent spread-spectrum wireless technologies, lisped,” I don't like the rat-race of today. To live a quiet life make me feel better.”
The Psychology of Technology
According to Psychologist Steven Goff of Princeton University, in a 2004 thesis paper, titled “A Nation of Droids,” Americans are losing touch with human contact and falling behind other countries in valuable social skills. Yet real people do need to coexist peacefully with technology. Thus the humanistic language used to describe technological functions.
DVDs don’t copy information, they burn it. People don’t type vast quantities of information; they feed it into the computer. Reports don’t print, they run. Screens don’t stop working, they freeze and users give them a “boot” to start them up again. And a gig is not an event anymore it is unimaginable technological prowess.
So here are the good things: Siblings insulated with headsets and fixated on DVD monitors installed in the back of their parent’s car seats no longer slap each other silly during long car trips. Restaurants save on crashing crockery since the preferred space to end a relationship is cyber not public. People are dating and marrying less frequently because there is no reason to go out to stave off boredom: between X-Box 360, Live Wire, PSPs, and BlackBerrys, introverts have designed so much stimulation for their extroverted peers that most of these formerly outgoing boulevardiers don’t even know where their offices are anymore.
And that’s where you’ll find the technoverts, sitting in the CEO chair. Oh sure, they’re wearing headphones, and carrying an iPod. But here’s an inside secret.
They’re not connected.
