Modern day life has brought many a convenience to us
humans. A toaster to toast a piece of
bread by merely pressing a button or a steaming cup of caffeine with the press
of another button. And that is just to
start our day.
Our entire existence now has become subject to multiple
button pressing activity, least of which is the incessant banter between two or
more individuals of our species using the manifold tech available to us.
Communication therefore has transformed from what used to be
a difficult exercise in millennia past and now more so become central to our
(perceived) success as a civilization occupying this rock.
I would argue how and what we choose to communicate in
today’s day and age are immensely important to our future survival. The POTUS presenting a point of view about a
deadly pathogen and its impact to society vs a trained immunologist
articulating what we as a society need to do for self-preservation brings it
home to many of us.
The very definition of communication though begs some
scrutiny. It is variously defined as:
- The imparting or exchanging of information or news or
- Means of sending or receiving information, such as telephone lines or computers
According to the Aristotelian Teleology (the explanation of
phenomena in terms of the purpose they serve rather than of the cause by which
they arise) we need to pay attention to what communication provides rather than
why and how it originates.
The contradiction to that however is the idea that our
modern conveniences now allow many of us to use shorthand to get the
“messaging” across to another of our kind or not.
If emojis (graphic images that serve as a short hand for
human emotion and thought) can convey the same idea instead of a whole sentence
then it serves the sender and receiver the purpose of saving time and energy it
might take to type out a whole sentence.
But then again if that is true and the ilk of Aristotelian
era had resorted to punching out similes on papyrus would the treatises have
been as profound as they are viewed by our ilk now?
Would they amount to awarding a bagful of PhD degrees to
scores of scholars? Are we as a species
better off or worse with those writings to look back on and not a bunch of
symbols?
In that vein I have always wondered whether Michelangelo
would have been better at his work if he had Autodesk on his table before he
set out to carve the Pieta? Or was there
a fundamental human X factor that held Leonardo’s brush when he finished the
Mona Lisa?
While we have been able to use tech to put men on the moon
and do deep cellular research into our human body, aided by fascinating
scientific advances enabled by advanced communication, we have not seen much if
any modern day Pietas being chiseled either.
Do any of us crave more of that type of expression or
communication anymore?
Are we better off knowing that Aristotle did not use emojis?
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