Wednesday, May 12, 2010

inspired by long analytical conversations with the girlies, special thanks to K.B! XOX

Relationships. A wireless connection?

After a secret indulgent few hours of sex and the city re runs, I noted that even in the last series the importance of technology in relationships is completely brushed over. Yes that sounds clinical and inhumane almost, but it’s a rather guilty truth that rests beneath our sub-consciousness and supposedly moral superiority as women who ‘have it all’. Yet surely our adamant dismissal only re enforces our obvious avoidance of the fact, that we have more reliance than ever on technology to help us form and sustain relationships?

In life generally the ease of communication is so readily available, so effortless that we barely acknowledge our use of it. My grandparents’ generation waste hours in pre-arrangements to rendezvous at a later date, working themselves in to a bickering turmoil of potential times and places. I agonisingly listen, fully aware that this triviality of pre arrangement can be cut out completely through a simple text. Technology can make spontaneity more than just a thought in our crammed days, but a realistic possibility. An unexpected phone call and free window of time at the right moment can delightfully shift the flow of your day in to a new path. For general practicality then, it keeps things efficient and makes time for sudden opportunities to arise and experiences to be had.

But with relationships it makes things tricky. A generation that never turns off their phones and are constantly reachable through this permanently open portal of communication, leave little space for solitude and uninterrupted time with their own thoughts or even with a real person...

(for full article email christinepettman@hotmail.com)