Everyone has exactly 24 hours in a day.  Some days feel longer, and some shorter.  I was recently involved in a discussion that made me tie in technology with the relativity of time.  The use of technology makes time go faster.  This statement was worrying and yet intriguing.  I find it worrying as it is provocative and it demands people to question why we want time to fly faster.  Don’t we want to live our life fully and enjoy our happy moments?  But what if happiness is having wifi or 3G and in holidays we want that.  We want to be connected all the time.  In addition, procrastination is happening all around us.  We delay tasks we have to do and don’t realise where our time has flown by.  In university I remember checking Friendster (the ghost of Facebook), replying emails when my lectures just felt so long.  Time passed by fast and the lecture seemed to end earlier than it would.

When I’m out and about, I notice people glued to their phones.  People are constantly on Facebook and Instagram.  There is this persistent need to be connected at all times.  Time flies.

On the contrary, when you’re on a holiday without 3G of wifi, the day seems longer.  I experienced this in Vienna.  My 3 days there without wifi seemed longer.  I felt we could cover more in a day.  We were more engaged in conversations and less caught up with the internet.  I realised how dependant we were to be entertained by our smart phones even in restaurants while waiting for our meal to come.  This thought made me almost feel sad for what the world has become.  I was observing on other tables how everyone checked their phones at least 3-5 times during a meal.  I honestly don’t think it could be of any importance, yet I usually do it too.  I check my whatsapp messages, Facebook comments, Instagram likes etc.

Do we still have time to smell the roses?  Do we still have time to appreciate the world?  Time seems to be passing us by and we all seem to be paralysed by the paradigm shift in technology.

Related articles

• What I Learned About Technology After Talking To A Bunch Of Teenagers This Weekend (businessinsider.com)
• My (almost) week without a phone (walleintheworld.wordpress.com)