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Instant
Messenger may be downfall of communication Human beings, as a race, are lazy. This characteristic is what makes remote controls and pizza delivery so popular. While convenience is good in these instances, what is evolving is a deterioration of communication based on failure to expend effort. What I’m referring to, of course, is America Online’s Instant Messenger, better known as the best thing ever invented for those who are deathly afraid of human contact. Instead of picking up a phone or actually going to see someone, one can simply “IM” them to send a message. Ingenious, really. Friends and family across the world can communicate easily and instantaneously. My next-door neighbor now has no need to make the effort to dial the four numbers of my on-campus phone number or even to get up and walk the 8 feet from her desk to mine in the next room. She can simply keep sitting in her chair while clicking on my screen name and typing the information she needs to convey. There are quite a few benefits of this system, namely, that it’s free, and it’s simple. But the problem is that it’s too simple to just type and press return. The typed conversations are brief, and plagued with abbreviations and little expressive smiley faces, as well as incorrect grammar. Who knew that people who spoke so normally could write so bad and not seem to care? The inclination is to keep the exchange of information as simply an exchange of information. Thus, friends are reduced to sending quick one-liners to each other instead of having a real conversation. It’s too tedious to type out all the parts of a story, and too impersonal to type the intimacies of emotion. So you summarize. Or avoid a topic. Sign off of Instant Messenger and pretend the computer cut you off. Good-bye. What distinguishes IM as e-mail’s evil cousin is that it is now possible to find out what others are up to without actually communicating with them. This used to be called gossip, and it was a horrible vice. Now it’s disguised as an “Away Message”, and it differentiates itself from the former by the information being spread by the person whom it’s about. Here’s how it works: You are at your computer, typing away on the Instant Messenger, when you look at your watch and realize it’s time for class. Not wanting to offend anyone you are typing to, you leave an away message that will be sent to anyone who sends you an IM. For instance, “I’m in class.” Now, anyone who wants to read your away message can, and so therefore anyone can know what you are doing. Without having to actually communicate the information to anyone, it has been done. It’s starting a rumor, but about yourself. Moreover, anyone can find out how long you’ve been pathetically signed onto Instant Messenger, waiting for someone to send a smiley face, or, how long your computer has been idle. If this were information about when you left or arrived at your residence, it would be stalking. But on a computer, it’s called technology. College students are notoriously susceptible to IM addictions, mainly because of the fast, unlimited Internet service found in on-campus housing. But we’re the people who should need personal communication the most, as going away to college keeps us from being able to see our friends and relatives from home as often as we had been used to. Yet we choose to type them brief notes, to sit alone staring at a monitor rather than to call and hear their voice, or to leave our own space to go out into the world and meet a friend. Perhaps the saddest thing about Instant Messenger is the irony that what was created to facilitate communication is instead the downfall of conversation and a promoter of isolation. Jenny Specht is a junior English and political science major from Fort Worth. She can be contacted at (j.l.specht@student.tcu.edu). |
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