Ring, Ring, Ring…
Are You There?



We all have our shortcomings — our limited thinking. Consider today’s telephone — that “device is inherently of no value to us,” and compare the vision of 1876 with the reality of today’s world.

The familiar ring, ring, ring of the telephone has been replaced with harmonic tones, riffs of Bach and rock-n-roll, or optional squeaks, squawks, and knock, knock, knocks. Where it once hung on your wall or sat on your desk, the telephone is now tucked in your pocket, your handbag, and your backpack. We have grown accustomed to using it while driving our cars, or riding on buses, taxis, and ferries. We seem to use it when and where we want, yet some people rankle at not being allowed to use it during airline flights. Add to all of this, we invented speakerphones, headphones, and earphones to attach to our telephones.

And what’s it all about?  Our human need to communicate? To talk with each other? To stay connected?

Melding telephone and computer technology, we have yet another way of communicating — instant messaging. IM is instantaneous conversation established by typing your message on your computer keyboard, then clicking “send.” Your words pop up on the screen of the person on the other end of the phone line. Back and forth with the instant messages — type and send, type and send.

A cousin to instant messaging is text messaging which allows users to type short messages on the tiny keypad of their cell phone. And, as with instant messaging, you type and press the send button. The receiver’s cell phone rings or vibrates indicating a text message has arrived. This endless need to communicate with each other has spawned a whole new language — an abbreviated language that is prolific in the teenage culture.

These short text messages, no longer than a few hundred characters, reflect our love of using technology to communicate. The text messaging is rather cryptic using symbols like W slash (w/) for “with” or BC (bc) for “because” or question mark (?) for “I have a question.”

All day long, kids from middle school through high school, and plenty of adults too, are messaging each other with this entirely new language. NVM means “never mind.”   PLZ means “please.”  TU means “thank you.”  BFN means “bye for now.” And T+ means “think positive.”

If you feel excluded from this new language, one code remains unchanged:  XOXOXO. It still means hugs and kisses — even on a cell phone!

What interests and concerns me is the evolution of our tools without really improving how we communicate with each other. In my childhood years where we connected two tin cans with a string and attempted to chat from one room to the next, we now sit in cafés text messaging the person across the room. Makes you smile, doesn’t it? 

Encapsulating ourselves with headphones and screening incoming calls with the use of caller-ID, or deciding whether or not to view an incoming text message, we seem to hear only the messages that we want to hear. Even iPod and iShuffle give us the option of listening to only what we want to hear while shutting out the rest of the world. And we pile on more technology.

What are we doing? What is this hunger for communication really about?  Sometimes I think there is a great weaving of humanity at work — that all of these devices reassure us that we are connected. Threads of technology, from tin cans to chat rooms to text messaging and cell phones — we long to be connected to something greater than ourselves.

Consider the ironies. Although we need and long for a sense of connectivity, we now have the technology to keep us connected twenty-four-seven, and still we don’t feel connected. We reach out through all of our connecting devices, but are we really communicating?

We once had to imagine exotic, far away places in the world. Now we have immediate access to live images of these exotic places. Conversation, transportation and commerce all happen with an immediacy that was never fathomed a hundred years ago. Even though we can see and hear our global neighbors instantaneously because of all this technology, somehow we still have a difficult time learning how to communicate.

What technology do we need to add to our communication toolbox so that we genuinely feel connected? Or does this have absolutely nothing to do with communication at all?

Is all human progress just one great cosmic brainstorming session? Brainstorming taps our capacity for lateral thinking and free association as one idea sparks another. Are we all involved in the process of illumination, as one light bulb turns on another and another and another?

When I see everyone around me talking, talking, talking through their computers and cell phones, it makes me wonder what on earth we are so busy talking about.  

And then, I imagine a great sh-h-h-h occurring?  A silent moment where all the generators and computers and cars and emails and electronic signals simply stop. People stop talking. Every animal stands in silence. The oceans stop lapping and crashing against the shore. Rivers run silent and wind creates no sound. Can you imagine the sound of that silence? It would be a moment like none we have ever experienced before, and I imagine that after a moment such as this, we would finally be able to hear each other.


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Published June 2007 in Living on the Peninsula.   For more about Ruth, visit www.drruthmarcus.com.