This summer I began working for Technology Support Services here at ACU. I now get to spend my days answering phones and going out on service calls to aid the vast legion of faculty and staff here in their technological woes. All this technological focus has gotten the ol' thinking engine working, and caused me to reflect on the futility of technological progress.
I have found myself asking, "Has our technological advancement made the world a better place?" I must answer that it has not. Rather than bringing humanity together, our heightened technology has, in my mind, served to further distance us from our fellow man. Take the cell phone, for example. The cell phone provides unprecedented levels of access into our personal lives. Granted, we may "choose" to leave the cell phone at home, or turn it off, but in reality how many of us actually do that? The cell phone is the new gatekeeper of our personal lives. Instead of having a face to face conversation, the preferred medium is now electron to electron. For me this, is a step backwards rather than a step forwards.
As much as I love my iPod, whenever I wear it, I am conciously separating myself from the world around me. Cocooned within my own little world, I am as God. I have the power to choose what sounds I hear around me, what conversations I participate in. I can always just point to the white earbuds and cord as a ready excuse to avoid positive human contact. My music is without a doubt very profound, and my choices enliven the world around me, but even then, I am missing out on the world in which I claim to participate.
I do realize the apparent hypocrisy of my post. Here I am using a technological medium to proclaim the evils of technology. My thought has not been wholly negative, as I have striven to produce something constructive from the dialectic tension of my life as a cyborg. Technology should serve to enhance human interaction, not insulate it. Technology is at it's best when it enables human interaction. Use the cell phone to meet someone face to face. Leave the blackberry in the garbage and work when you're at work rather than when you're at home. Do not choose to be enslaved to the silicon idol.
"Liberty, Freedom, Tyranny is dead!"
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
You sound like Heidegger, except his answer was National Socialism (as represented by the Nazi party). To tell the truth, I totally agree with you (and Heidegger) about technology not paying the dividends that most of us assume (but I never understood the nazi thing). It helps us in health and communication, but it keeps me up late blogging, which triggers health problems, and I've gotten in touch with people that I haven't seen in years, but I don't have any friends who actually live in town (except for my sister).
Post a Comment