Uses of Technology

Let’s face it, we live in a technologically driven world. Everywhere around us texting, buzzing, stimuli, stimuli, stimuli! And what have we got to show for it? An over-dependence on our cell phones, an attention span of a three year-old and if we’re real lucky, maybe cancer. I actually remember growing up in a household without internet; my parents saw it with contempt, until my brother and I persuaded them that we needed it for high school assignments. They agreed, I was in grade ten. I honestly, truly strived to “type faster than Mommy” and today type a 103 WMP. What did people do before GPS’s? You mean, I have to use a map? I was recently asked to track my uses of technology for a 24-hour period for a forth year film class, and what I quickly came up with is that I simply use way too much of the stuff. While tracking I tried to imagine going through one day without technology, and what that would mean. It began with the most obvious of things, from my alarm clock to the amazing shower-head my roommate bought. Then it began to get a little more complicated as I took a walk to work: traffic lights, public transportation, elevators. Did I forget to mention that I work at a call centre? When it works, technology has the power to enhance our lives. It supports generators, hospitals and keeps a lung-breathing on a person otherwise unable to do so. It has the influence to save lives and can take us around the world on a long flight.

It is Human Nature’s first law that bad things happen because they’re good. Technology is no different. For example, my personal impending thoughts about the genetic engineering for aesthetic traits (hair, eye, skin colour) in humans. Or that the exceeded use of technology is on the rise, which is the sort of technological abuse that causes a sort of ‘dehumanization’ in people. We see it everyday; mass amounts of people on the bus, all on their phones, earphones in both ears. And I hate to say it, but I’m guilty of it too. This idea of ‘dehumanization’ is further taken up in David Bell’s article “Identities in Cyberculture”. Bell gives us a sense that much of the debate “on the virtual community has been polemical, spilt between those who argue that cyberspace re-enchants community […] and those who argue that only community is damaging real life community, by encouraging a withdrawal from real life” (92). As the human race continues barrelling down this age of technology, one can only imagine these types of problems simply getting worse. The sorts of ‘online communities’ Bell discusses are forged out of technology, individuals live online. The popularity and success of communities like these ensures continued adaptations, or striving for a perfection that does not exist, and all I can think about is Alex Proyas’ I, Robot. Although I know we’re along way off from that.

I used to hold this view of a technical-minimalist, and still kind of do. I can’t help that I’ve been swept along the fast-paced waters of tablets and gadgets, and haven’t looked back since. You either adapt, or you die. I choose to live, and thankfully can in the real world. My children’s, children’s children maybe not.