This is the first piece to a three part editorial about the negative and positive effects of today’s technology.
photo by Becca Holt
With the change in the millennium came an emergent culture throughout the many regions of the world: the dawn of the new age.
Some people said it was partially due to the immense shift in technological successes from previous decades. Scientists and inventors seemed to be gaining speed with the amount of products being released onto the scene. The generation of children growing up in this new high-tech culture became flooded with toys alien to their grandparents and surrounding adults. This changed the ways in which they were raised, watched, taught, and communicated. In the following years they would continue to witness an enormous growth in products available for their every need: a cell phone to keep track of their friends, an iPod to be plugged into their music scene wherever on Earth they are, a GPS tracking program built into their car to show them the way. After all this rain of technology, are the future generations going to drown or float upon their portable DVD players?
The debate of old versus new is, yet again, another timeless battle. The union between tradition and contemporary social norms is something rarely balanced and is commonly feuded over. Teenagers these days can remember a time when their parents sternly stated there are no cell phones allowed at the dinner table. On the same note, not one school teacher can tell you how many times they’ve asked headphones to disappear out of ears during class. With that said, I’m sure all teenagers have a “legitimate” reason to be sending text messages from under their desks or spending hours surfing the web. In their minds, they are entitled to use their personal technological devices; after all, they have grown up with this mindset.
Now, do not get me wrong, I am as guilty as my peers: I use my cell phone to text message and check my Facebook regularly. But, I also recognize that this evolution in human interaction is rapidly changing the way people connect with one another in a drastic way.
Human nature draws people together into social groups, tribes and bands. At the dawn of human history we learned grouping together creates a safe environment with increases in food and relationships. As the years passed, love became a dominating emotion in the human brains instead of instinctual selfishness. Reproduction no longer remained just a necessity for carrying on a species, but instead created a special bond between two people. In 2009, this connection often begins through a compatibility test on a dating website or through various exchanges of text messages. I continually find people my age base first emotions they have for another on the clues given away by a text containing a winky-face icon or the flirtatious “lol” [laugh out loud]. The question arises, do I really connect with someone when I’m not looking into his eyes, and instead am staring at an illuminated screen?
Another issue among the communication barrier between folks today is the confidence to hide behind their computers or cell phones in order to instigate a fight or spread bad news across a vast network. When some do not have to confront the person whom they are hurting, and look them in the face without feeling guilty or sad, the words spill out through their fingertips, onto the keyboard and off into cyber space without remorse or fear. Rumors, photos, gossip, harassment, etc. are constantly passed between friends and down right enemies. This swollen ego of an entire generation furthers the gap between individuals.
Only time, motivation, dedication and action can alter the path humans have set course upon. The technological era has both positives and negatives, although in this segment I focused mainly on the negative, and if we use it in the right away it will help us survive ourselves versus jeopardizing what 3000 years worth of people have tried to achieve. The next piece on this topic will focus on the depressing effects this new age has had on Earth and I will further discuss the negative attributes of technology. Anyone with a touch of naivety can say the world would benefit if we resorted back to the Stone Age but the realists agree that technology is here to stay and grow exponentially. So, with that said, the last part of this editorial trilogy will discuss the positives of technology and how we should learn to use it in our favor instead of against our very nature.
