Communication tools as Barriers to Communication

My son walks in with the cell glued to his ear, moves to the computer and then to the TV; in between answering and making calls: with the time both remote and the cell clutched in hand.

My daughter from USA starts a family conversation session, the Lap Top open, sitting in between us, seriously tapping he keys.

My friend, Ashok, has his eyes fixed, discretely, to his blackberry even when we meet for dinner at the club.

Hari’s invite me for lunch: Sudha soon picks up her cell and gets involved with someone on a long discourse, possibly more for the benefit of the gallery. It was nothing that could not have waited.

I invite friends for dinner, soon the ladies are on their cells passing instructions to the maid back home.

God forbid if one of them receives a call from a son or daughter abroad: for the next ten minutes there is a self imposed curfew by the other guests keeping mum.

The ring tone from some one’s cell, which has refused to heed the request to keep the phones on the silent mode, distracts and breaks the bond with the speaker, singer or the actors as the case may be.

‘Where are you’ the query on the phone and the evasive reply by the one sitting behind me in the multiplex brings me back from the word of fantasy that I were engrossed in to the real world of the darkened auditorium.

I pod , I pad , I phone, Laptop, though communication tools in them selves , are killing the art of face to face conversation and small talk, acting as powerful, barriers to communication and have successfully replaced the earlier not so effective devices News paper and books

Destiny's Child

This afternoon’s image of the child, currently in nursery class, ensconced in the grand father's lap, who earlier had interacted with me in only sign language, refusing to be prompted to use his vocal cords, still persists and makes me wonder as to how far the generation has progressed from our childhood days and where it is headed.

The tiny tot opens the lap-top, lying on the table, starts playing with it, simultaneously, absent mindedly, chewing on the morsels of food being pushed in his mouth by the servant in attendance, all the time intent on the PC screen, while manipulating the track ball.

Earlier the saying went, ‘Born with a silver spoon’: soon would need to change to, ‘Cyber Child’, ‘Born with a mouse in hand’