Advancing technology makes society isolated

Everywhere you look, people are distracting themselves in some way as to avoid the world around them, which is a dirty and dying planet indeed.

They usually have an iPod playing a racket into their ears, communicating via text message on their cell phone, watching TV or surfing the Internet. Communication has been dwindled down to either a one-way format (TV and iPod), or a bland two-way (pitiful text messaging or pitiful instant message on Facebook or online forums).

The communications revolution has indeed brought people together and has allowed a much quicker and easier way to contact people, but it has also dumbed that communication down to acronyms like "LOL" or "LMFAO" and other annoying phrases people are too lazy to call and say over the phone or even in person.

Technology has also isolated people from one another. Families get together to ignore one another while watching TV. The iPod made it possible for music geeks like me to carry a large majority of my music collection with me anywhere I go, so I can listen to music and ignore people.

The Internet has a lot of promise, yet it seems like most people generally use it for porn or posting videos of themselves on YouTube ranting and raving about nothing in particular or how they can play a crappy cover of some song on a banjo. This is usually done alone, both the performer and the viewer.

So we have a nation of people who basically ignore each other. They have no interest in community or company. We seem content on being alone in our little worlds, which are not real.

These distractions are a multi-billion dollar business. Companies make money on creating things to isolate people, then doctors make money telling these people that they are depressed because they are too distracted all the time and should go out and converse with a real person.

It's a weird phenomenon. Today, it seems like people relate more to a fictional character on a TV program than a real person who lives next door. They care and cry when some TV character dies or leaves the show, yet barely bat an eye when they hear about roadside bombings or random acts of violence that result in the death of a real person.

The exception to this is when a celebrity dies. Case in point: Heath Ledger. He overdoses and the world freaks out and his picture is placed everywhere and people feel sorry for him. If some guy in Minneapolis who is not famous dies in the same vein, people just shrug and say that's what happens to a junkie.

So these distractions not only isolate people, it distorts reality.

People are going insane and do not even know it. Their world is in their Blackberry and their human contact is on Facebook and their record collection is on an iPod and their best friends are on TV.

As Jello Biafra, ex-lead singer of the punk rock group Dead Kennedys and now a social activist once stated, "living in an artificial world is a mental disorder. It is unhealthy for the psyche."