Human Emotion: Preventing Gibson's World From Becoming Reality?

As a young adult in today’s day in age, I am not ashamed to discuss my extreme use of technologies, especially communication technologies. Between text messaging and Facebook, it is difficult for me to even estimate the amount of time that I dedicate to communicate with others using technology. I was shocked, but not necessarily surprised, at what I found.

The first thing that I do every morning, without fail, is check my phone for any text messages that I may have received in the eight hours that I had spent sleeping. Occasionally, I will have a text message from my boyfriend, friends, or parents from earlier in the morning or later the previous night. Because I am incapable of leaving messages unanswered, as I learned while observing my behaviors, I answer the text message right away. This means that by 8:07 AM, I have already begun my day long interaction with others via technology. 

Who I start and end my day with, every day.

Throughout the course of the day, I will text my boyfriend, who attends college in Baltimore, any opportunity that I get. I do not text during class, when I am at the gym, or when I am sleeping, but other than those instances, you can always see me on my Blackberry, most likely texting him. It is definitely difficult being one half of a long distance relationship, but text messaging is one of the major reasons that we have remained so close during our time at separate schools. It is a simple way for the two of us to know what is going on in each others’ lives, yet does not require the “effort” of a telephone conversation. I am sure that there are many people out there who would disagree with this claim, but I make it only because, personally, I am not a big phone person. I have never really felt comfortable talking to people on the phone, although I have learned that it is not quite as awkward as I once though it to be. 

I will also text my friends here at UR throughout the day so that we can make plans for dinner or going to the gym together, but the texting conversations with them don’t get much deeper than that. I think that this is because we would rather talk face-to-face, rather than the somewhat impersonal form of text messaging. 

Now I know that I basically just contradicted myself with this situation and the one mentioned previously, but I think that the two circumstances are completely different. In one instance, I am physically unable to see and talk to the person, a fact which I can accept, while in the other, I only need to walk down the hallway to have a face-to-face conversation. 

I think that this simple fact is the reason that we have not created the 3D “consensual hallucination” that William Gibson discusses in Neuromancer. As a species, we are able to accept the fact that there are some times that you will not be able to physically be with the person that you want to talk to. This has always been true, and will remain true forever. I think that it is an essential part of us as a species. If we had decided to follow Gibson’s vision of the Matrix, we would be disregarding an innate human emotion; longing. The uncomfortable, sometimes painful emotion of longing for something, or someone, that you cannot have or physically be with is something that everyone experiences. Although it is an awful and upsetting feeling, I would argue that it makes us what we are, what we’re supposed to be.

Would we still feel this in the world of Neuromancer?

Until the time that Neuromancer’s world comes to be, which hopefully will not be for a long time, I think that we will be content with the world that technology allows us, even if it means being apart from the ones that we love.