Busta Rhymes - Busta Rhymes: 'Technology Is Dehumanising People'

Rapper BUSTA RHYMES has urged his fans to respect his "personal space" and ask before taking a photograph of him - because he hates it when people snap pictures on their cell phone without asking.

The Touch It hitmaker, real name Trevor Smith, admits he has mixed feelings about the advancement of technology - because while hi-tech gadgets are useful, the convenience of it all is beginning to "dehumanising people" by reducing personal interaction.

He says, "I like technology, but I don't like what people are letting technology do to them. There's a lot of things we couldn't do without technology.

"But when it gets to the point where... just the little things in life like, for example, where somebody comes up to your face and snaps your picture, doesn't ask. I feel like the quality of privacy and respect of people's personal space has been completely disintegrated. You can ask to take the picture. I will be so glad to take the picture and pose and look good for the picture. But when you catch me while I'm looking real sideways (bad) and the picture's ugly as hell, I don't want you to have the picture like that! So technology just destroyed that considerate thing."

And Rhymes is not a fan of text messaging either - he would much prefer to talk to people directly instead of sending messages back and forth.

He adds, "Now, if I'm calling you to say 'what's up?' but you ain't (sic) picking up the phone, because it's more convenient for you to text me back, I don't understand that. What happened to the human interaction? It's dehumanising people. They don't have to talk to each other anymore."

But the rapper confesses he's been drawn into the social networking craze and loves to keep fans up to date via his various online blogs: "I'm a Twitter junkie; I'm a MySpace junkie; I'm a YouTube junkie, all of that. I'm kept thoroughly abreast with that. So technology lets me keep in touch with fans like never before."