Jordan Pauly

I am sitting in my work chair; slightly inclined as to encourage good posture. The sound of the new Tron Legacy OST seamlessly plays through my Skullycandy headphones as I have a staring contest with my dual computer monitors at work… my eyes become dry and bloodshot, I lose. I need an idea of what to write about for my new Under the Apple Tree article…. Think, think, think.

Last night I had the opportunity to test drive the new Xbox 360 Kinect which according to Wikipedia is a:  “controller-free gaming and entertainment experience by Microsoft for the Xbox 360 video game platform. This new device allows me to interact with my console in a whole new way: voice commands, determined gestured, and interaction between presented objects and images.

This morning I downloaded the new “Project” iPad magazine which is an interactive paperless magazine focused on current news, technology etc. I haven’t had a chance to play around with it yet, but I did load up the magazine right before I left for work and the HD video, and High Resolution pictures I saw sure made for some good eye candy… I will post a full review later.

What do both the Kinect and Project magazine have in common? They both require human interaction to establish and maintain a working relationship… one cannot exist without the other.

The theme of my life for the past 24 hours has been based on two concepts:  human interaction and digital products. The best example I can think of for relating these two themes is to look at Facebook and our cell phones.

This is where today’s article will start…

The digital world around us is a young boy with many gifts and talents. This young boy has done some amazing things in his life, but his true potential will be realized once he is mature and can fully harness all of his abilities in a direction that will enrich the lives of those around him.

My biggest squabble with the young boy right now is that through promoting and creating some of our generations most amazing technologies… he has fallen short of cultivating a healthy relationship between technology and human interaction.

Every day I see young kids, teens, and adults texting away on their phones not taking in the world around them. I play sports and activities with people who every five minutes will go check their phones to see if they missed a text or a call…myself included.  What happened to the days of old when playing in the creek or running through the sprinkler on a warm summer’s day was enough? We as a society are so wrapped up in this web of technology that we don’t even take the time to “smell the roses.”

Facebook whether it seems like it or not promotes unhealthy relationships. First off let’s get this straight. The term friend is by definition a person you know well and regard with affection and trust. Now take a second and go to your Facebook page and see how many “friends” you have. I just looked at my own page and it says I currently have 1,111 friends, this makes me laugh. By definition there are probably 20 people out of that 1,111 that I actually share my life with, and probably 10 of those 20 that I actually trust.  I would call the remaining 1,091 people acquaintances or idiots I drank with in college…not friends.

I don’t want to confuse anyone, I use and am on Facebook on a daily basis and I love some of the things it has to offer, but it is important to realize that some aspects of Facebook are fictional.

Activities like Facebook and texting take us away from traditional human interactions like shaking someone’s hand or carrying on a conversation with a neighbor. People are so obsessed and deeply bogged down by technology that they don’t even take a second to look up from their smart phone to open a door for someone, or simply smile at a passerby. It is paramount to recognize what technology is and what it is not and we must continue to instill manners like “please” and “thank you” in our children.

When we as humans interact every day we use the majority of our seven senses without even knowing it. These things we touch, see, and smell are our reality…REMEMBER THIS! Computers, cell phones, and Facebook cannot feel emotion, the best they can do are portray how you feel using emoticons or descriptive adjectives.

In moving forward in this day in age technology will progress further and further and we will truly see some amazing things in our lifetime. The important thing is to be able to distinguish between what is real, and what is just a number in the matrix of fiction.