My best essay in a long time!

Dear Readers,

Good Evening! Last night while nursing a 38 degrees fever and waiting for Norton Antivirus to complete its long-wanting upgrade, theokwek penned the below essay about the dangers of modern ecommunications. Haha isn't it ironic that you're reading this on a WEBLOG now?

The Straight Times Editor

E-communications

Today’s world brings with it a flurry of changes, indeed, the age-old saying that “Change is the only Constant” rings ever more true in our ears. In this present age of e-communications, SMSing and MSNing each other has become a way of life, replacing even the phone calls and emails that our parents found to be so new and wonderful just a generation ago. With the acceleration of creative output – both virtual and technological – our lives have changed, and speech, that very integral faculty of human existence, is gradually being displaced.

Now don’t get me wrong. If you press that I’ve been using the various text functions of my hand-phone a lot lately, I’m guilty as charged. Confirming meetings, arranging rehearsals, pinning down the date and time of the next Chinese tuition lesson have slowly permeated that 360-message quota, pushing my actual output beyond that limit sometimes. And I don’t preach a puritan lifestyle of a life without text messages either, instead, sometimes I feel that I wouldn’t be able to fulfill this busy 24/7 schedule without that trusty silver-black Nokia that’s lying on the mouse-pad beside me now.

However, there are times that I feel maybe we’re depending on these text messaging facilities a trifle too much?

It isn’t exactly new news that out of our personal communications, words – these precious letters handed down to us from the time of the Tower of Babel – only constitute a mere 7%, while body language, tone of voice and other factors play a much larger role. Indeed, any good orator will tell you the many disadvantages of putting all you have to say word for word on a PowerPoint slideshow, as this will only bore your audience, however much their interest in the topic.

We humans are lonely creatures by nature, and even in our everyday conversations we thirst for that human touch: that trace of quiet sympathy, that tingle of unmistakable happiness, even a disillusioned yell of rage can bring across emotion and a wealth of feelings. God created us emotional – let us behave thus.

But the world we now live in is a world of pure words, where computer and humane languages interbreed, where numbers and letters are used simultaneously, where two-dimensional ‘Smileys’ usurp the power of a genuine grin. We live in a world where ‘not liking somebody’ can equate to not having any close relations with him, having distaste for him or hating him openly. We live in a world where ‘Ha-ha’ is not just a hearty laugh but a consoling phrase, a spiteful murmur or even a punctuation mark, where other words are found wanting. We live in a world where ending a letter with “Yours Truly” is by no means true, just a mere formality. We live in a world where three dots at the end of a line indicate boredom, but exclamation marks are in no way exclamations. We live in a world where black words on a white screen are only the faintest distance from pure lack of emotion.

In this strange new world of e-communications, words tell all, or nothing. Meanings fade – into untold, unwritten, unpronounced, un-worded oblivion. It is a world where we, sentient beings that we are, can only assume.