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Communication culture surrenders to technology

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ON January 18, I watched a live broadcast on ZBC TV where President Emmerson Mnangagwa was interfacing with youths at the Celebration Centre in Harare.
There was a glut of technological gadgets carried by the youths and around the President.
The youthful female presenter even offered the President a smartphone to log on to some blog and take a selfie.
What pressed me to write this article is that the President chose to interface with the youths.
He could have easily interacted with the youths through some satellite link while he sat in his office.
However, we should learn two things from this interaction: First, the President believed in the age-old face-to-face communication.
Second, he upholds our cultural values which dictate the importance of communication between individuals.
Communication between family and friends cannot be effective when every moment of our time is filled with technological distractions.
There is nothing wrong with using technological gadgets and connecting to other people, but it is totally wrong to become slaves to that technology and using it irresponsibly that it destroys our cultural and family values.
The book, Hamlet’s Blackberry: A Practical Philosophy For Building A Good Life In the Digital Age (2010) by William Powers notes: “We are losing something of great value, a way of (cultural) thinking and moving through time that can be summed up in a single word: depth. Depth of thought and feeling, depth in our relationships, our work and everything we do. Since depth is what makes life fulfilling and meaningful, it is astounding that we are allowing this to happen.”
This has happened as a result of overuse of social media.
Perhaps by meeting people from the different groupings of our society, the President is consolidating that depth and cementing relationships through face-to-face interactions.
There is no question that life is now characterised by ‘speed’; our time is now known as the ‘Information Age’, but what has happened to the cultural family unit due to the so-called Technological, Information Age.
About 20 years ago, a family would sit and talk. There was a dare (a headmen or chiefs’ court) in the rural areas where the headmen and chiefs would preside and talk face-to-face about issues affecting the village with their subjects.
A teacher in the classroom or lecture hall would interact with students face-to-face, a mother would sit down with her daughters and talk, and our grandparents would sit with us every evening telling us life stories. The list is endless.
But what has happened to the face-to-face communication that we used to value in the African and cultural context?
It is clear for everyone to see; now some headmen and chiefs, families and teachers are all now talking through social media platforms like WhatAapp, facebook and twitter among other social network platforms.
Technology has also had an effect on our older generation. Their roles as advisors, counselors and teachers has been relegated to social communication networks which now churn out wrong information to unsuspecting young people.
It is also true that the art of courtship and marriage has been relegated to social network dating sites where the practice of intermarriages is now rife.
Culturally, it used to be: ‘Rooranai vematongo’, but now, because of technology, the practice has been abandoned except in isolated indigenous communities who have stuck to their cultural beliefs and societal norms.
There is a deluge of information on a daily basis from so many network and social communication sources that we are becoming overwhelmed, and, without context, it is impossible to make sense of it all.
Today, with smartphones and e-mail to add to the technological mix, so many of us are connected all the time, constantly attentive and always replying to these messages.
Where has that left the family?
People are spending more time in front of the big and small screens and less time on face-to-face communication as well as less time by themselves without some means of electronic communication to distract them from any possibility of solitude.
Worldwide, the use of technology has led to the breakdown of families; to divorce, so-called crimes of passion with some social communication networks have taken the counselling role of aunts and uncles.
The role of our grandparents as custodians of our cultural values through folklore has also been usurped by technology.
The role of teachers as educators has been taken over by the small screen, and in essence, not all information that we have access to on our technological gadgets is beneficial to the individual. This has led to the erosion of our cultural values.
According to research, all scientific or technological progress is not necessarily human progress.
Just because technology is available does not mean it is of benefit to the human race.
Psychologists have warned that we should not allow machines to dictate our pace of life.
We should not become tools of our creations.
The problem has been the rush by the new generation to implement and get on with life.
Before, however, information and its flow were governed by the frame in which people lived.
In respect of how we use time and technological gadgets, we should be getting our priorities right, not wasting time that could be productively used.
And there is more to consider when we talk about having the time to think.
But this takes time — time that has been set aside for specific purposes like networking on social media. Perhaps all we need is to take time to consider and assess the value of communication technologies vis-a-vis our cultural values.
We should reflect on the need by the President to have face-to-face interactions so that we build on family and cultural values, because this makes us the people we are; vanhu vane hunhu/ubuntu.

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