Blog & Vlog

Vlog: Technology vs. People

By Eric Workman on January 27, 2012

Hello, I am Eric Workman. I have worked here at Bridges now for almost eight years. Wow, time flies.

Anyway, I would like to share something with the Deaf and hard of hearing communities something that happened to me today. I was out interpreting for someone who is Deaf. They had mentioned that they had just moved to the area and noticed that there was not much of a Deaf community here in Nashville. They had tried to locate clubs, meetings, social events, but could not find members of the Deaf community.

That got me to thinking…I remember moving to Nashville in 2004. At that time the Deaf and hard of hearing would flock to LDHH, as it was called at the time, at fill up the lobby connecting with each other. Later, they would ask for assistance with making calls to the IRS, Social Security, or their credit card companies and staff were happy to assist.

Now we have video phones, pagers, phones, which are great. I am not taking anything away from recent technology. It has greatly improved the lives of the Deaf and hard of hearing communities and empowered them to handle their business independently. But along with that, comes the fact that nowadays, face-to-face interaction is rare. This makes me a little sad.

I’ve noticed the Deaf club membership’s numbers have decreased. I recently attended a Silent Dinner and noticed the same trend there. I ask myself, “Is this caused by the rise of technology? Have we replaced personal interaction with technology?”
I simply wanted to share my thoughts and challenge the local Deaf and hard of hearing communities to hold more social events where we see each other face to face as opposed to through screens, monitors, or texts messages: have true face to face interactions again.

What do you think? Do you agree technology, as great as it is, carries this negative consequence? This is occurring in the hearing world as well. This is not confined to the Deaf and hard of hearing worlds. Research shows the emergence of video meetings to the point where hearing people simply don’t meet like they had done before.

I just find this very interesting and wanted to toss my thoughts out there and hope this encourages the Deaf community to tackle this issue. I do not like seeing comments that we have a tiny Deaf community in the area. I always reply, “No, there are many members of the community here and the community is very strong.” But I need your help in proving it.

Thank you, have a great week, month, and rest of 2012.

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