With nostalgia

Technology acts as an extension of our capabilities, facilitating communication, learning and access to information. It has the potential to free us from tedious and repetitive tasks, allowing us to focus on creativity, empathy and social connection. If I want to go to the movies today, before I sit down in my seat I've already seen the movie trailer (and I think I might like it, so I go), I've bought tickets online, and I've even chosen the row of seats I like best. I have also been able to choose a more or less comfortable chair. My doubt comes when I do not see that this extension of my capabilities that technology offers me goes hand in hand with a greater humanity when it comes to relating to others.

When I was little, on Sunday afternoons, my father would take the four of us to the movies. We would watch two movies in a row to spend the afternoon at the parish movie theater, which was a huge theater that was packed with children. I remember that, in that crowded theater, there was no absolute silence: popcorn, chocolate cakes, jelly beans were eaten and strawberry or chlorophyll chewing gum was chewed. People also drank through straws, making a corresponding noise as they sipped. In the bar there was also a water jug with water. People talked loudly, laughed loudly or cried. Spectators got up to go to the bathroom, making a whole line stand up. There was no respect for strict silence and we spectators assumed it; it was part of the experience. That was the way it was and nobody in those days (I'm talking about more than forty years ago) could think that it could be otherwise.

Another characteristic of going to the movies in the eighties was that people would comment with the person in the seat next to them about aspects of the movie they didn't understand or they would tell each other “what had happened” in those minutes they hadn't seen when they went to the bathroom (watching two movies in a row is almost five hours). You could also hear the snoring of someone bored who had decided that this was a good place and time to take a nap. And there could be the case of a passionate person shouting to the protagonist of the movie on the screen to be calm, and that nothing bad was going to happen to her. “Calm down, now the boy is coming to save you”, shouted the little boy referring to the boy in the movie, without thinking, not even remotely, that he could be rude shouting like that.

Today these things are inconceivable, but others happen like phone calls or people who decide they read the newspaper on their screen while watching the movie at the same time. People who can't be relaxed watching a movie without checking their WhatsApp messages. The theaters are less crowded and no one watches two movies in a row in one theater, just as no one sucks through the straw making a lot of noise (what kid hasn't done that?). I look back with nostalgia and remember a kid shouting at a screen, well into the plot and enjoying what is happening there. Going to the movies was to get into a story and escape. Only a few families had television.

When yesterday, next to my seat, I see a guy reading messages and the newspaper on the screen of his cell phone and at the same time he is following the movie, I would like to go back to those cinemas of the eighties full of life, when at the end of the movie you could not get up because an invisible nail had fixed you in the seat and you left the theater commenting with your friend the things that had caught your attention and thinking that you would love to see it again, while someone you do not know is listening to you and thinking that the same thing has happened to him as it happened to you. In the end I notice that, although in the past I wouldn't have been able to get a ticket online, we established more human relationships when it came to this activity.

A balanced use of technology is the key, as overuse can lead to dehumanization, sedentary lifestyles and social disconnection. In fact, I feel very bad when, when asking someone a question, sometimes they don't even make the effort to think and search in their mental attic for something to answer you, but just blurt out: “Google it”. I miss, then, the excited child who shouted at a screen.