Community: Technology Connects and Disconnects

One of the legs of creating personal legacy is using appropriate technology to assist you directly in your creative efforts and to connect you with others in your effort to create your vision.

Technology has connected the globe primarily through advances in transportation and communication. The networks of highways, railways, shipping lanes and air traffic that allow us to move people and things so quickly and so far also move diseases, criminals and economic power. The networks of computers, smartphones and video/audio production equipment not only move our voices, image and creations instantly but they invade our privacy and expose us to the lowest standards of decency, morality and responsibility.



A few years ago, I traveled to Arizona for a week. I spent three days camping and hiking in the Grand Canyon with my oldest son Andrew and three days working in an office in my hotel suite on the sale of one of my client companies to its employees.

I hosted conference calls with participants in Florida, Ohio and Utah but they could have been anywhere. When I returned home, I posted photos of my Grand Canyon hike on Facebook where I shared them with my family and friends, some of whom I have not seen in person since high school.

The story above is common place. While it might have astounded our grandparents, it would not even impress our children. Through infrastructure networks on the ground and in the air and between towers, satellites and over optical fiber we are all truly connected on a potential level.

At the same time, we are becoming disconnected from our families, friends and neighbors. As email replaces hand written notes and texting replaces conversation the quick blast has replaced a deeper level of communication. What is being lost is subtle but its long-term impact is not.

The movement from face to face to writing letters to phone conversation to email to texting and tweeting has removed both reflection in choosing what we really want to say and the nuance of receiving the subtle emotions which provide meaning from our interactions. The full range of human emotion and interaction has been reduced to only those things that can be communicated more bluntly.

My observation is that the first wave of disconnect came from families moving physically apart from each other but currently the biggest disconnect of technology is within our neighborhoods and local communities. People often do not speak to or even know the names of their neighbors. Our local contacts have become more transaction-based and less about socialization and building deep friendships or intimate relationships over time.

Within large organizations this problem also occurs as people spend little time face to face and more communication is done with large distribution list emails or conference calls which shift all interaction into asynchronous, disinterested, distracted and impersonal inputs and outputs. Where it is easy to escape making a commitment, interpretting discordant body language or bonding emotionally.

What is lost with this disconnection? Community building is the primary casualty. Community is not just a function of sharing but it is also a function ownership. While a physical and transactional sharing goes on regardless of ownership, both building a shared vision and cultivating shared values are stunted by the lack of ownership required for community building.

Reconnection is possible but only when both time and space are sufficient. Direct human interaction whether around a task/problem or in celebration are needed to establish emotional ownership and hence a sense of community.