Op-Ed: When fear meets technology, your evening walk ends up on video
We all have fear. That fear is real, even when it’s unconscious, even when many of us have convinced ourselves that it’s overblown, just a passing, “frightening” feeling. And sometimes, it’s more than an uneasy feeling. Sometimes, it’s all-consuming.
The other day, a woman called. While I was on the way to a meeting, I could feel it: the fear radiating through the speakers and through my ears. She said she would never be comfortable at an event that required a computer or a phone, nor would she ever participate in an event that required a phone. It was a real fear – one that had become ingrained over many months of social media and technological development, with a focus on “new and evolving technology”.
I’ve heard this story before. It’s a little hard to believe this time, but it’s true: that fear is real.
I’ve said before that sometimes, fear will trump technology. It’s an instinct that over-reacts to a certain, often unconscious fear. I’m not talking about a fear of technology, but of human behavior.
My first experience with the problem was with my mother’s Alzheimer’s diagnosis (in the late 1980s). She would suddenly, and without warning, break down and fall into a depressive state, only to snap out of it almost instantly and pick herself back up. Her depression would lead to my father’s death a few months later, and I would be forced to watch them die, both at the bedside of my mother and in our home.
On the other side of that, my own family had watched me grow up. My father, who had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, would suddenly fall and hit his face, knocking himself unconscious, and then fall facedown and hit his skull on the floor. He had no speech, barely the ability to speak, and he had a fear of water, and of drowning. He was not the same man who would help me swim without my legs. One of the first things he did