IF: Then

In a post-modern world of personalized news feeds, TIVO and a service economy have we gone beyond the basic need for community? Has our ability to carve out and compartmentalize made the world at-large the equivalent of a giant vending machine waiting to dispense only what we need when we need it sans the messy need to interact, collaborate and innovate?

For the majority of the population we start our days commuting in our own private bubbles. Our only "social" interaction is "the jerk who cut me off" or the bumper to bumper dance we join in as we crawl towards our workplace. We may turn on the radio, but for the most part it isn't to find out about the world or our community so much as to check our portfolio, laugh at the cruelty of an on-air personality or to lose ourselves in the music that reminds us of a time in our lives when we didn't queue up every day for the same desperate ennui.

Once we've reached our destination and parked our vehicles we then begin a blinkered day of getting things done with little concern for context or impact. We travel to our allotted workspace, fire up the computer and proceed to output. Periodically, we may pull ourselves from the screen long enough to get feeling back in our legs, to relieve the strain on our back or to catch up on the episode of Survivor we missed. We aren't concerned about the members of our working community, unless of course, they are impeding our raise or making it difficult for us to "Get 'er done." Our lunches consist of hasty consumption typically over a report or article we need to read, but have no time during the day. We return to the office less refreshed and more disconnected than we began our day. We furtively glance at the clock on the screen dreading and anticipating the moment when we should go home. Some of us lurch out of our cubicles futiley hoping that if we reach our cars quick enough we'll be at the head of the anonymous serpent that is snaking home. While others bow their heads still further and deliberately plod ahead on the keyboard towards a mythical completion and fulfillment of the task.

Finally, we reach home; put the car in the garage and trudge inside to vacantly stare at our spouses and children. The need to communicate seems overwhelming as we force a conversation over the meal that everyone needs, but no one is happy to eat in their self-absorbed, over-scheduled lives. When the meal ends all parties disperse as the personal interest grenade sends each scurrying with little interest in what anyone else wants or is doing.

The irony is that at every turn we continue to enable communication and connectivity, yet people continue to be more disconnected and irreconcilable than ever before. We spew forth mindless gibberish in emoticon emails or text driven phone calls, yet rarely say more than the superficial hello. We know less and less about each other and become weary and wary at the prospect of learning more. The connective tools have enabled us to feed on only what contact or information we have for our immediate needs, but have not linked us to the restorative power of community. We have collaborative softwares at work, which facilitate not collaborating at all with the flesh and blood person beyond the key strokes. We can even order in our meals so that the only contact needed to splurge by "eating out" is to hastily hand the cash to the delivery person and retreat inside with plastic and paper encased sustenance to be eaten while browsing inane emails about Viagra or flipping channels trying to find reruns of last week's NASCAR event.

So, though my tone is bleak, what do you think about the idea of community as a necessity? Do we still need to connect and interact? Or have we gone beyond that to an isolated world of serving up only what we need, when we need it with out the messy necessity of others?