With the rate of technological innovation, we are at the beginning of a revolution in inventions. Every day there seems to be somebody, somewhere, who has invented something incredible that could change the world.

Whether this invention gets the proper patents, funding and marketing appeal to achieve this viral victory… that’s another story. 

However, there is excitement at what is potentially being offered and we can only fathom what the next fifty years will bring. My hope is a time of prosperity, but I’m in idealist.

There is one process that continues to evade the technological dichotomy of this new world. It’s the process they desperately try to imitate, but in doing so, lose something in doing so.

That process is the interaction between each other.

The medium (our cell phones mainly) have made it incredibly easier to interact with each other in (mostly) meaningful ways, but there is a desperation for the one-on-one chat. We’re already accumulating evidence of the anxiety that is placed upon those who spend most of their time interacting digitally.

It’s prompting some to equate the pandemic of cell phone addiction to cigarette addiction.

At one point, it was permissible to smoke just about anywhere. Most homes even contained cigarette boxes for guests, alongside the coffee, tea and other desserts one normally offers.

Then once the health issues started surfacing, establishments separated the smokers from the non-smokers, while businesses forced their smokers to partake in their break outside the building. Some may remember the question always asked at a restaurant, “Smoking or non-smoking?”

Now consider the behaviour pattern of our data-addicted selves today.

We ask our hosts for the Wi-Fi password of their house (if they don’t give one right away) and establishments post measures to access their Wi-Fi for all guests. To go somewhere without wireless access almost seems archaic and unnerving.

However, how long before our insatiable need to really connect with each other will this change into the trajectory smoking did?

It’s only a matter of time before we’re asked, “Wi-Fi or no Wi-Fi?”