An Intervention

I feel I should start this post by getting one thing straight – Louis Gray is one of the nicest people you will ever meet. He’s super smart, genuine, thoughtful, and honest. He’s a rare tech pundit who isn’t all about ego and self-aggrandizing. We all love Louis, right? Right.

However.

This post yesterday is about 10,000 kinds of wrong.  Now don’t yell at me – we all love Louis, remember? But that doesn’t mean we’re required to accept this level of hyperbole. Facebook didn’t fail your family, Louis. You have about five trillion friends on there, making it quite easy for updates from family members to get lost in the shuffle. I get it, really I do. You wanted the site to be smart and know which people are important to you. But it can’t do that yet. Oh it very likely will in a couple of years, once somebody figures out what to do with all this personal data with which we’ve flooded the Intertubes. In the meantime, you’re going to have to choose human interaction instead.

And that’s really my central point: all this technology that we spend 80 hours a week with, that has become our go-to activity during downtime, that is the hub of an ever-more-frantic daily existence – all these tools and services are not the endpoint. Or at least they shouldn’t be. All these gizmos and software should be improving our actual real worlds, not creating entirely separate ones in the clouds.

I’m really not one to talk. I check TweetDeck at stoplights. I talk to friends more on Facebook than on the phone. I’ve caught myself enjoying a good book or movie and immediately wondering how best to share it online. And when you work in emerging tech, you’ve got a ready-made excuse. “This is my job! I have to tweet!” In actuality, it’s damn addictive and can easily overtake real-world existence.

With other addictions, you know you’ve hit rock-bottom when you forsake all other aspects of your life in search of the high. In technology, I’d say it’s when you blame a social networking site for not telling you you’ve become an uncle. Step away from the computer, Louis. Go outside and read a book under a tree. Or, better yet, go see your sister and the new baby. It will all be here when you get back.