"Happy Birthday to Me" :) The Culture of Attention!
November, a cold month, and not so favorite time for many of us, however, my heart gives more attention and respect to this month every year. November 25, a special day of my life to be thankful to myself for making me stronger to continue my life journey ahead, regardless of many challenges and obstacles. This nearly three-decade-long life has already offered me a lot of happiness, a bundle of sorrows, hundreds of obstacles, thousands of life lessons, and uncountable priceless memories. This year, Sunday, 25th Nov 2018 not only changed my age number but also changed my birthday experience. I still don’t know who is responsible, my poor memory or too caring technology?
It was all about the last weekend. After I came to Norway, I noticed that abroad studies, student life, assignments, and weekend jobs are more like a synonym to each other and it has become the same routine of my (international student) life as well. On Saturday, 24th Nov I have been working till midnight, but my mind was busy to recall the past birthday memories, and the attention (wishes & calls) I used to get from my friends, family, and relatives. After work, I was so excited to check my mobile, expecting some messages and calls from friends and relatives, but the excitement didn’t last even a single second when the empty mobile screen showed me only the date and time ( 25 Nov-12.35 am) instead of some birthday wishes. It was a bad feeling to accept the fact that it’s not only the age number that has been changing through the years, but most importantly the emotion, understanding, friendship, relationship, life struggles, and even the destination of my life. For some reason, some friendships have become less friendly despite a long friend list, the family connection has become more distant despite deep attachment, time and location has changed within the same universe, but surprisingly the only thing which seems deeply connected to everyday life are widely expanded technologies. The sad thing is, I don’t even know if it is a privilege or unfortunate to be highly connected with technology instead of nature and human society.
On the way to home, my mind traveled back to those memories when we among our friends used to compete to be the first wisher at 00.00 to show a deep friendship to the birthday person. During the day, I used to visit the temple with my family or a friend and pray for a healthy and happy life journey. Being together and sharing food with friends in a nice place was another common thing on every birthday... meanwhile the loud announcement in the bus “Bjerke” dragged my happy mind back into the real world where only the cold and darkness were paying too much attention and gladly giving me a tight hug instead of my friends and family attention. I felt like the cold winter is another irresistible form of nature to the humankind besides a highly dominant media and technology.
It was around 1:30 am in the night when I reached my room, my body was tired after a busy work shift, but the mind was not ready to fall asleep. To get rid of that unpleasant feeling and tiredness, I decided to take the help of some relaxing music on my Laptop. As soon as I opened Google Chrome, the first thing that I saw was Google wishing me Happy Birthday, with some candle lights on its home page. It was such a strange feeling to see that wish from Google which made me shock out of good feelings that at least technology is giving me attention by being a first well-wisher on my birthday, but on the other hand it made me sadder, knowing how much the online world has been involved in our personal life activities to present itself more caring and loving than our real friends and family circle. It was a coincidence that an interesting issue discussed in an interaction program ‘Irresistible Forms of Interaction, Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic Approaches to Media Culture’ on Friday, 23rd Nov at Litteraturhuset in Oslo became my real-life incident on my birthday. The program was about an unavoidable form of interaction and the culture of attention online and its impact on human society. Google replacing my real friends' and family's attention proved further that technology has a huge influence over humankind and our everyday activities. Therefore "the exchange of attention in the online atmosphere seems IRRESISTIBLE!”
The next day I checked the Nepali calendar and noticed that all the bad feelings were an output of my poor memory, in fact, my actual birth date was the next day on 26th of November in Nepali calendar this year. If I hadn’t received any wishes and attention from my sisters, brothers, family on 26th Nov, I would have been making myself more sad and isolated from family attachment and at the same time, I had felt happier and more connected with the internet world. Probably, this is how technology and the virtual world promotes fragmented attention online.
Although this is just a small example of the attention sharing culture, this incident symbolizes a serious problem of modern society. As we know love, relation, care, and attachment are forms of attention which are a basic element of human civilization. No doubt that the culture of attention in the online world has been massively promoted by the emotionless media and technology in every society day by day.
Making a conclusion out of my personal incident and understanding, technological innovation is a continuous process and hard to stay untouched by in this era of digitalization. Communication technology is marketing itself to maintain good public relations with its users by giving some occasional attention, to get back more attention towards ICTs products and services. The culture of attention online has become a common trend, but people are hardly aware of its consequences on their psychosocial aspects. Online and social media forms of interaction have become irresistible in today’s computer-mediated society, therefore proper IT literacy courses seem even more crucial than cybersecurity degrees for the new millennials, to limit an ongoing technological dominance over human emotions.
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