It is not that I am anti-technology. I spend too much time on my computer and Internet. There is something psychologically taking place with me and that cell phone. And, it gets me into trouble. When I need to make a phone call when I am away from home, I cannot find a pay phone. They are quickly being removed or broken and unfixed. I can go for miles without finding one. Once I ran into a police station to see if they had a pay phone and even they had removed the one in the hallway for the public. I am amputated unless I remember to charge my phone.

We are undergoing a communication shock, as when the printing press was invented. Our communication is moving to the TV (children spend about four hours a day in front of the screen), Internet (a survey by Yahoo young adults ages 13 to 24 spend more time on the Web than with any other media source. Teenagers spend an average of 16.7 hours online per week, excluding e-mail, followed by TV for 13.6 hours per week, followed by radio, that took up 12 hours of a week. How much time was spent eating meals with the family, sharing ideas, thoughts?

We are blessed with the words of wisdom

We all have gifts to share

Stories to tell

Let us all learn from each other

To exchange words of wisdom

To share the positive things that we learned from our past

Therefore, others will not fall into the traps laid on the paths below us

The ability to communicate is a wonderful gift

One does not have to communicate through their mouth

But through their actions

We are all touched in a positive way through the ability to communicate

Spiritually, verbally or through the actions of one's ability to communicate

Stacey Chillemi

Where are we headed on the communication path? More than ever, we talk about being "stressed out," "unhappy," "depressed." We are searching for answers through any mean possible, yet we are breaking ties with the one thing that can hold us together. Will technology replace the only gatherings, story tellings, we have? Will we eat together over videoconferencing or teleconferencing? How will children learn about their tradition? Oral tradition is an essential part of all societies, despite the growing reliance on written and electronic records and accounts. These traditions account for the ways the world is and the way it should be. It assists people in educating the young and teaching important lessons about the past and about life.

The undeniable loss of tradition in the modern word does not at all entail a loss of the past, for tradition...

With the loss of tradition we have lost the thread which safely guided us through the vast realms of the past, but this thread was also the chain fettering each successive generation to a predetermined aspect of the past. It could be that only now will the past open up to us with unexpected freshness and tell us things no one has yet had ears to hear. But it cannot be denied that without a securely anchored tradition - and the loss of this security occurred several hundred years ago - the whole dimension of the past has also been endangered. We are in danger of forgetting, and such an oblivion - quite apart from the contents themselves that could be lost - would mean that, humanly speaking, we would deprive ourselves of one dimension, the dimension of depth in human existence. For memory and depth are the same, or rather, depth cannot be reached by man except through remembrance. (Arendt 94)
Is it time for us to review what technology is becoming, has become? Is it time to review our positive extensions and amputations? Will we be able to draw on our cave walls in future generations what has happened in the past to help those coming in the future?

The world is waiting to be known; Earth, what it has in it! The past is in it;

All words, feelings, movements, words, bodies, clothes, girls, trees, stones, things of beauty, books, desires are in it; and all are to be known;

Afternoons have to do with the whole world;

And the beauty of mind, feeling knowingly the world! (Siegel)

References

Arendt, Hannah. Between Past and Future. New York: Penguin, 1993.

Chillemi, Stacey. Faith, Courage, Wisdom, Strength and Hope: Inspirational Poetry That Comes from the Heart. Frederick, MD: Publish America, 2005.

McLuhan, M. And Q. Fiore. War and Peace in the Global Village. New York: Bantum, 1968.

Oelschlaeger, M. The wilderness condition: Essays on environment and civilization. San Francisco: Sierra Club Press, 1992.

O'Keefe, B., Brown, L., & Schuller, R. Identification and rankings of communication aid features by five groups. Augmentative and Alternative Communication (1998) 14: 37-50.

Oral Tradition. "Indian Country. 25 November, 2006. http://www.mpm.edu/wirp/ICW-14.html

Siegel, Eli. Self and World: An explanation of Aesthetic Realism. New York: Definition Press, 1981