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| The future Keira Cameron on Continuum |
Barbara: The people behind the hot new TV show, Continuum, asked us to ponder friendship and trust, both present
and future. On the surface, this show is a thriller about a police officer who,
through a radical terrorist act in 2077, gets transported in time to 2012 and
must save her own future. But deep down this is a compelling, believable
exploration of how our beliefs, expectations and hopes are also coloured by our
times (aka our experiences). They got us thinking: how has modern technology
affected our friendships from the past into the present, and how will the
dynamics continue to evolve into the future? What do we think the future holds
for our closest relationships?
Deb: I
had a BFF when I was a very little girl with whom I have remained close to this
day. Of course in those days she was, simply, my best friend. We were
inseparable. And inseparable in the 50’s and 60’s meant “inseparable”—face to
face, voice to voice, heart to heart.
Technology
such as it was then, brought people together. If we wanted to listen to music,
we played records or the transistor radio and listened to it together. It was a
shared thing. The phone was also a wonderful tool for connection with friends
but, as was the era, my time was strictly limited by my well-intended parental
units. The only other authority figure in my life at that time was the
streetlights which would come on midstride, mid-game, stopping cold a good
round of “What time is it, Mr. Wolf”?
They were glorious, sweet times and I loved the connection of that
period to each of the humans in my life.
I will never
forget the day when my best friend and I skipped up the street, singing and
holding hands, only to be stopped in our tracks: my house was brandishing a
Sold sign on it. Yes, it had been for sale, but in kid world, that sale was
never going to happen. It had been weeks, and no bites ... until bang. It is my
first ever memory of weeping my guts dry. My best friend and I clung to each
other in the hopes that when my parents saw how distraught we were they would
rip the Sold sign up and use it for kindling. But as bad as they felt for us,
as you can imagine, they were not swayed. It was my first glimpse into the
world of adult decisions that were between the adults and not shared. This was not
an era for “family sharing” dinners. They had made a grownup decision. Because
they were grownups. We were ten.
My friend
and I vowed to keep in touch and we did. Our parents did their best and drove
us back and forth to each other’s homes. Sometimes, as we got older, we would
take the bus. We were a good forty-five minutes from each other, which in those
days was like traversing the Cabot Trail from one end to the other. We stayed
in touch more or less right through high school, but the “less” started to
overtake the “more” as we each forged new friendships and lives. After a while
we lost contact altogether. Then in our thirties we ended up working together
on a Movie-of-the-Week. The depth of how out of touch we were was illustrated
by the fact that we were both shocked to see that the other one had gone into
the acting field. We were happy to see each other but, for my part, there was
awkwardness and guilt. I can’t speak for my friend but, as lovely as it was to
see her, we just didn’t fall back into “it”. We met a few times and it was
lovely, but we did not reconnect with those “best friends” of our youth.
Cut to: The
internet with all its wily connecting ways! So, suddenly, there we were, my old
best friend and I, skipping through cyber space holding hands. As we started to
email and Facebook, we found that it brought us back to that comfortable place.
Memories were brought forth, photos were shared, and bonds were reformed. The
internet had replaced our end-of-the-day conversations with each other on our
princess phones. This time we were free of the sound of, “Okay, Missy, off the
phone!” And as it turns out, the
internet was doing just what the phone had done. It was making us yearn for
each other, for that face-to-face, voice-to-voice connection that we would have
the next day. And so we started connecting in person and spending time alone,
with our husbands and with our mutual friends.
My old best
friend is just one example of the reconnections I have made that have delighted
me and brought my past into my future in gentle way. The internet has brought
me to a connected place. I know the prevailing thought is that the internet
disconnects us, but for me it has been the opposite. It has freed up my time
with its shorthand ways to do the things I want to do, and to be there for the
people I care about. And if an email seems in any way a call for help, I just
pick up the phone and really connect.
But I
wonder, will it be that way for a generation of people who never had the
intense face-to-face? Will they crave what they have never really known? I like
to think they will. We are human after all, with the need for real human
contact. Somehow, I think we will instinctively seek it out. We can’t help it.
Barbara: I’ve
told you guys before how I struggled to establish true female friendships for
a long time, committing instead to my relationship with Phil and being a mom,
and not really understanding that platonic friendships took an equally
committed approach—one with as concerted efforts in sharing (I was a terrible
sharer) as there are in listening (I was a great listener).
Like Deb, I certainly have found that blogging and Facebook
and email and everything technology-related has only helped me in my efforts to
embrace—and trust—sharing. And it has felt very much like a wild and happy ride
embracing this new tech-world. When I think of myself in my 30s and remember
being a working mom and recall how I felt back then—utterly in love with my
family, and certainly able to have a great time with friends, but somehow,
intrinsically, lonely, I want to take my hat off to technology and really
celebrate all that it has brought me in terms of connecting with people. Today,
I feel more in touch, more “heard”, more a part of the greater fabric. Yet when
I consider it, I can’t ignore all the cautionary warnings about what might
become of us if we continue to immerse ourselves into this relatively new form
of communication.
So, in the spirit of considering my life experiences and
thinking forward, here’s a re-cap of what I believe to be the benefits of
modern technology so far today: I get to hear from friends I would never
otherwise keep up with; I get to meet new friends and like-minded (open-minded)
souls from around the world—again, people I would never otherwise meet—I have a
forum for my own voice, which is intrinsic to my well-being (call me
egotistical, but I want to tell you stories and I want you to hear them, and I
want to hear your stories and I want us to talk about them and what they mean
to us); through the unflinching honesty of so many others online I have daily
opportunities to have my world or personal vision skewed in new directions; I
get to live vicariously through many more people; I get to “see the world” in
more colours than ever before; the world feels smaller and therefore it feels
more possible that we might take more responsibility for it in the future—we have
the chance to care more, understand more, relate more, accept more, take less
for granted, appreciate more.
But on the other hand, there are also many naysayers. Even optimists
bring up legitimate concerns about the future of our relationships if we
continue in this artificial world of technology: we might, in fact, care less,
understand less, relate less, accept less, take more for granted. Just the
other day I read this article lamenting the downfall of eye contact. Katrina Onstad—whose writing I love and
respect—bemoaned how, because of our attachment to technology, we are seemingly
losing our most vital connector: what and how we see. In fact, I remember being
impressed many years ago when I read about a study that discovered that when we
listen to others, we are wrong about
their true meaning at least 70% of the time! We misinterpret significance,
intent, and motivation more often than not. Of course, there’s that other study
that tells us that we read people correctly 80% of the time when we
subconsciously interpret their body language. So it’s kinda hard to dispute
that we need to see each other in
order to truly understand each other.
Through only writing our reality and
not engaging in reality, we have the
option to offer only certain, idealized elements of ourselves, to (as Katrina
O. says) “curate” our own lives. And also, sometimes we lie (even to
ourselves)! I know I’ve been guilty of intellectualizing and then expressing
some important aspect of myself only to either change my mind the next day
or—more likely—have someone who knows me really well call me out on it and say,
“Bullshit!”
So, with these basic parameters on the board (and please add
your own here), where might we be in 65 years when it comes to how we
communicate in our relationships?
Maybe we’ll be in touch with every single person on the
planet. A kind of technological beehive where our community needs outweigh our
individual needs, and food and healthcare and environmental safeguards will be
distributed accordingly (I’m an optimist). Maybe there will be no borders. Why
do we need them, what are we protecting if not our mutual survival? Maybe, in
order to sustain our friendships, we will have gone so deeply into technology
that we will no longer need the visual cues that were once so imperative to our
survival on the savannahs. Maybe the “bullshit” meter will be an automatic part
of our daily lives: a scanner in our computers (whatever those will look like
then!) that can measure our heart rates and pupil dilations and tell us, “You
are way off base with this assumption,” or “Bang on, sister!” We can laugh
about it with each other in our virtual coffee klatches (hello, “The Old Middle
Ages”). Or maybe we can turn that setting off so that we’re operating not on “absolute-truth-mode”
but on “philosophy-aka-‘what-if’-mode”.
Deb: What if at
some point in time we have the ability to read each other’s emotions? Not by a
glance or a smile, but through the kind of technology that can enable us to
detect a quickening pulse or a reddening face! It sure would save time on bad
pickup lines. I also wonder about the possibility of body scanners that work as
we enter a shoe store or clothing shop, reminding us of what we chose last time
and what we might be interested in purchasing today. I remember seeing this in
the movie Minority Report and
thinking, “Yeah, hell yeah, I’ll take that!” As middle age has crept closer I
have found myself fantasizing about what might be available to us in the future
and, believe me, it has been a battle in my brain between privacy issues and
convenience issues—as I get older, convenience is starting to pull ahead of the
pack, I am ashamed to say.
Barbara: So what
about trust? Would we trust more or less if we had access to everyone’s
emotional state through scanners and readers? We can know someone we love is
frustrated, scared, bored and still be shocked and heartbroken if, because of
these things, they betray us. Having their emotional states tracked
scientifically or communicating in other visual ways won’t preempt us from
living with the burdens of loss and pain or with the highs of joy and accomplishment.
Technology can’t prevent us from living in the moment, even if that moment
looks utterly different 65 years from now than it does in this moment right
now. We will still rejoice and trust and celebrate and love. That’s who we are.
For feel better or worse.
So what do you see in our future ... of friendship or human relationships in general?
