This Digital Age: How Connected Are We?

Some famous computer enthusiast said that “The future is now. It’s just not evenly distributed among everyone.”

If you wonder how many bytes of data is being sent across several points on a daily basis, globally, the number is astonishing. Probably aside from food, information is something that we now feed on endlessly every minute of the day.

Have you twittered? Do you facebook? What’s up with myspace? How many RSS feeds do you read day in and day out?

Add to that the new social networking apps like Foursquare and Whrrl and basically information is at the palm of your hands.

For as long as you have your iPhone, your Motorola Cliq, your Blackberry, and lately the HTC Nexus, you are never left out with what’s going on in the world.

The only drawback is that since there is too much information exchange, people tend to set aside the importance of keeping their private life private. That fifth wall that separates our privacy from the public’s eye is basically torn down. Much of the younger users don’t even care.

The evildoers who are lurking in the dirty corners of the web are waiting patiently to take advantage of our recklessness in terms of protecting our data.

Yes we are so connected these days that anything can be organized at such a short amount of time; that everyone can be summoned at once to do something spectacular; that printed media is almost unnecessary; that we spend more time engaging in our digital lives than with our family within our home. Yes we are dangerously connected through the information highway; we might as well be less human now.

Our phones and our laptops, have replaced the human company that we used to cherish. The one thing that never gets out of sight is our priced gadgets for digital networking, gaming, online shopping, and web eavesdropping.

Indeed, we have become more digitally meshed with our digital lives, that we all have become less connected to humanity—its basics, morals, principles and the very core of living life the way it used to be before the advent of the digital age.