Fastest Thum In The West

Have you ever wonder about today's thumb actions effect on communication. This essay explores my experience as a boomer having use texting for work and the resulting socialogical reflection

Recently I worked for a 26 year old woman, who used her texting as the mainstay of doing business. Her thumb was a blurr flying across the minuscule keyboard of her cell. She would hand me, the baby boomer, the phone and say, here you do the next one. Gripping the phone my thumb would twitch across the the little nubs, only to have nonsense come across the screen. Pressure was upon me and panic held my thumb in hostage. Slowing down was not an option.

Sighing she would take back the phone, erase the x#cbedewgsd across the screen and the thumb would become a blurr again as the screen showed success. In a blink the text was sent.

Everywhere I look today I see these thumbs flying. Have you notice that if you call your child they do not answer, but if you text them, they respond? This phenomena got me thinking.

The evolution of the opposable thumb is what many academics believe to be why humans advanced. Because of this amazing opposable thumb, humans developed complex tools and most importantly writing. Writing allows for knowledge to be handed down generation to generation. We get poetry, literature, art, screenplays and tv; all thanks to the opposable thumb.

The thumb has now taken on a new role in communications, that seems to be quickly replacing even the voice. But just how much can be said on this little screen of information. How can you hear the tears, the joy the anger and the person with this abbreviated form of communications?

Internet began the screening of human emotions and now it is text and twitter.

Is more communication, communication? This is my question that I pose and I would love to hear your thoughts?

Author's Note

Grammar is always a problem...so have at it. Like feedback Where do I go from here?

Reviews

[PurpleQuartz]

This is so true!
Keep writing

[A. Mourraven]

EXACTLY my opinion. I'm sixteen and I believe that texting is ridiculous, I have a cellphone that lays in the "sweltering hotspot" of my desk, where it never seems to move...except in an emergency where I will CALL the person.

Texting is dangerous even, at least when you talk on the phone whilst driving, your eyes are never truly off the road unlike texting (texting and talking on a phone, I find are trivial actions to utilize while driving).

My thirteen year old sister can text without even looking at the keyboard! I attempted to text a few times (honestly) and I truly am horrible at it, I become frustrated and feel the need to fling the piece of junk across the room and pray it slams into a cement wall (an urge I have never followed through with).

I do not even like phones for the matter, I prefer to observe the person I may be talking to and see there facial expressions to judge what should be said and what shouldn't.

This is all coming from the mouth- I mean keyboard of a sixteen year old girl.

Yes, communication between humans is developing with technology BUT we are no longer the social creatures we once were, we are gaining in technology but losing our ability to interact as a sociable creature on Earth.

As well, I need to say, when someone is texting they are carrying on a conversation that will last hours...if not all day. At least with a phone call, the conversation is normal (a few hours or minutes at most but not the entire day), this texting is destorying family bonding times and bonding with a mate.

Yes, this technology can be wonderful but it can also be a secret killer, lurking in the shadows waiting to destory the very civilization we -as a world- have come to create.

** Do you mean in the title..."Fastest Thumb in the West"?
I think you forgot the b :D