Today’s world is nonstop.
Like most everyone else, I’ve gotten caught up in it.
The harder I work to keep up with the latest, the more behind I get.
It’s the news. It’s our work schedule. It’s life at home. It's interrupting vacations.
Everything is 24/7/365 and it never seems to stop.
The pace is taking a toll on not just me but all of us. We are using AI and social media to communicate. We use AI and the internet to work.
It has led to some great things. We can contact people around the world in an instant. We can find vast amounts of information. But few of us take the time to vet it. Doing so has caused many to think our opinions are the only viable option for the world.
We have lost respect for others and ourselves along the way.
Two things are missing — personal connections and taking time for ourselves and those we love. Both will bring so much peace if used.
Just looking at the news; there are attacks from the left, right and center. Little of it is based in fact. Everyone is making judgements based on a few strokes by thumbs on a glass screen. Everyone is hiding behind miles of cable and fiber optic.
When it boils over, the social media algorithms take it to a higher level making mountains out of what should not have been mole hills to start with.
It is all causing us to take sides created by one view point reinforced by artificial intelligence. The new style of debate is taking us to a place where no one could have imagined. Instead we need to slow down.
Whatever happened to talking with someone about differing opinions? Whatever happened to respecting someone with a differing opinion?
The new technology has allowed us to take personal responsibility and respect out of the debate equation. All for what? To save time.
But what are we doing with that time?
Many are like me. The newfound time is used looking at screens and sorting through mounds of information. The algorithms are forcing more of the same information on us, reinforcing an ideological stance instead of going through the various sides.
Have you noticed when you google something, look something up on Facebook and sometimes speak about something, that subject keeps coming up in search results and are new feeds?
We have got to unplug some. We have to get away from all our information coming from thumb warriors hiding behind a screen.
We have got to get back to slowing down and having conversations in person. We have got to get back to agreeing to disagree. We have got to get back to respecting differing opinions.
But it works only when we take the time to slow down and speak to each other as humans, not enemies.
Cliff Williams is the news editor of Tallapoosa Publishers Inc.’s Elmore County newspapers. He can be reached at cliff.williams@thewetumpkaherald.com.
