On Being Connected

I went from my place to my mailbox yesterday and was out of touch. It was scary.

In my apartment, I have wifi. Zoom, says the wifi. I get my phone calls on my cell phone through the wifi and I interact with the world from the safety of under the covers, behind a series of doors and locks, because of that wifi. There is, I have discovered, very little phone service at that end of the building.

The front of the building has better telephone connectedness, so when I get to the mailboxes, I can use my phone via the 5G network that I pay for. Clearly, my wifi won't reach, but I have this other option. But on the path between the two, I'm out of the loop, in that limbo between the edge of my wifi and the coverage of the 5G. "I would say I am exactly like a ship carrying a cargo that will never reach any port." Except I'm not Tom Cruise.

Yet.

This got me thinking (not the Tom Cruise part) and I realized a major technological shift which has impacted out sociological identity and expectations. Big words, I know, but I looked 'em up and they mean what I say, 100%. Here's the thing -- in the olden days, we called a place. When we wanted to reach a person, it was first, essential that we knew where the person was, is or will be. We contacted that place and hoped that the person was there and available. When a person was away from that place we could not find the person. If we didn't know what place the person was in, or didn't know how to contact the place, we could not connect with the person. We called operators to help us connect to the place, still unsure if the person would be there. The phone book, though it was listed by person, was really a directory of phones associated with locations. As such, our baseline was to anticipate being OUT of contact until we could get to a location and reestablish our anchor and then we could be reached at that place. But on the road, or taking a walk, or in the bathroom (in most cases) we could not be found. Once we left to go out and play, we were incommunicado until we ended up at someone's house -- we could neither be found, nor reveal ourselves to others.

But times have changed. Now, instead of connecting to a place, we connect to a person. We have a ratio of approximately 2.4 phones per person (according to a statistic which I just made up, but you get my point) so we have the ability to contact and be contacted when we are no place in particular, and no place we intended to be. This has forced us all to shift the way we see our interconnectedness and we now start off assuming that each and every person will be available to be found and spoken with (or texted to) at all times. This has rippld into changed expectations for workers who now are "available" at all times. This has led to a change in parental awareness of their children's movements (which of course has allowed the innovation of industries to both prevent and amplify this constant contact). Now, when I walk to get my mail, I have to fear that blank space, baby, between the wifi signal and the 5G.

Now we know everything when it happens if not beforehand. We need instant gratification because we live without having to wait. We can't let things sit because our clocks have been turned to overdrive and we have no "off" time. When we are forced to tune out we feel that FOMO because the world is still happening. Go back 100 years and where is the FOMO? If you wanted to visit a friend you had to send a letter saying "I'll be there sometime between 8AM and June." One might say that cable companies are just old fashioned because that's still how they schedule appointments.