In the French conversation class that I attended at the Alliance Francaise, the youngest student was fourteen years old. The topic for discussion for the week was “ Technology and the evolution”,
The teacher asked us about the kind of invention that we hoped to achieve for the future. The fourteen year old said, “ Telepathy. Perhaps one day we need not speak and we can use telepathy.”
I go to a hairstylist who works from his house. He is one of those hairstylist who tries hard to advocate against perms and colouring as chemicals are bad for our health. He does yoga and has strong opinions about a lot of things. I often find the conversation I have with him send me thinking. I still remember there was this one time he uttered, “ Perhaps one day we will all be so evolved that we do not have to speak to each other. We communicate via our mind waves.”
These days we exchange a lot of texts via our mobile phones and often I find that it is simpler if we pick up the phone and just speak to one another. Texts and whats app messages are useful if we do not want to be calling someone at the wrong time. However it can often save us some time if we just speak over the phone and finalise the details. If need be, we can recapitulate the conversation by following up with an email to sum up the salient points.
There are definitely advantages in the world of texting. We do not have to speak if we are uncomfortable and often talking can be tiring if the person we are speaking to is not actually listening or worse not paying attention at all.