Wednesday, October 5, 2016

Regressive Progress - Things I wonder about

I fear for the fate of our civilization and in many ways am glad that I won’t be around to see how things end. Well at least I believe I won’t, but you never know considering how rapidly the world seems to be coasting downhill!

My reason for this post and that last sentence? The latest iPhone update and it’s new and “improved” messaging app. I just sent a text message to a friend about another friend that will not be able to join us because she’s sick and has no one to watch her children.

I typed out the message and iPhone automatically substituted some of the words with pictures instead! See for yourself.


So what’s the problem with this text message? It made the message a little brighter with the icon of the little smiley face with a mask on and instead of just the boring old word “watch” it gave me a cute little icon of a watch and look how adorable her children are. 

But people….it’s dumbing us down. Now we don’t even have to type out whole words! It's a world gone mad with Icons - Emoticons!

Does this look familiar? This is a photo of an actual caveman drawing. 


No words, just drawings of items to tell a story. We’re regressing people! Regression – “a return to a former or less developed state.”

Another example that is glaringly obvious to me is the new Facebook “like” buttons. Since Facebook started there has been a “like” button like the one over there on the left, and a comment box. 

Most people would hit the like button and then leave a comment. The ratio of like was always slightly above the amount of comments left but several people felt moved to comment if only to explain why they liked that post.

Then Facebook “improves” the “like” button and we now have this:

At first they were cute and I enjoyed using them. I would “love” almost everything that I used to only “like” before! The Haha was definitely much more fun that having to read “lol” or “LOL” depending on how funny the post was. 

The “wow” was pretty cool because I do often see something and say “wow”, but sometimes I would see a video of a bad car accident or read a news story about a child being abandoned and some people would “wow” it and some would “sad” it and some would “angry” it. It made me wonder what thoughts and feelings prompted the choice of icon? I would rather they had voiced their wow/sad/angry thought into words!

I also notice that whereas before I would get 30 comments on a post, now I would only get the icons. People don't actually feel like now they have to voice their opinion because they have more options as to the icons. I really miss reading the comments.

Maybe I should try blogging using just icons? Who knows, maybe my readership would grow and I'd go viral! But no, I raised in the era of "use your words". I know I tend to use more than others, but it's a burden you will all have to bear!


I know it’s just a petty thing to be worried about, especially considering all the other things going on in the world, but it just makes me pause and wonder about how regressive progress can be. 

4 comments:

  1. You're so right! I totally agree with your notion of "regressive progress".
    As for our civilization - it is indeed rapidly deteriorating , and I'm afraid it's too late to do anything about that. We've crossed all the red lines and there's no going back. We'll just have to somehow carry on with our lives and see what happens.

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  2. It's just the beginning of the end I'm afraid. As I said in my post, I hope I won't be here to witness it. I wish people would open their eyes. Thanks for commenting DUTA!

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  3. Hey Blue Grumpster, glad I'm not the only one that thinks so.

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Please leave a comment.I would love to know your thoughts!