I think that the answer is not clear cut, and cannot be simply answered one way or the other. The truth to this technological revolution, is that it is a sign of intellectual progress in terms of what we as people can achieve and create, but socially, it is purely destructive. The iPhone for example, is a crowning achievement in the field of design and technological creation. It allows us to compile our music, photos, videos, appointments, and conversations into a single object, that also serves as a communication device. This is a wonderful thing considering that 30 years ago, you would need a stereo, a camera, a video camera, a datebook, a home phone , and a personal computer to match the uses that the iPhone offers all in one. When I describe the iPhone in this way, it appears to be a wonderfully executed culmination of 30 years of technological progress. However, their is also a detrimental aspect to this compression of technology. Because it is easier to get onto a blackberry and start BBM'ing instead of actually calling someone and talking to them, or video chat with someone on ichat instead of actually meeting face to face with someone, people are becoming more and more inclined to take the electronic option for interaction rather than the more difficult real world interaction so prevalent over the last two-thousand years before any of this came about.
The danger I see here, is that a society over indulged with communication at its fingertips may gradually become apathetic, and well... lazy. While it is true that despite all the gadgets we already have, haven't caused this to happen, you must consider the problem in perspective. Today, any given person might not know more than a few people who have succumbed to being unmotivated to do anything non-electronic. But think about how many their were 10 years ago, before the ipod, or 20 years ago, before the cell phone, or 60 years ago, before television. People have become increasingly sheltered by technology, and if this trend continues, and it will, than their is no reason not to expect that more technology will result in less human interaction.
The fact is, as long as we continue to marvel at technology for the comfort and luxury that it appears to provide, we will continue to lose sight of the importance of real world interaction. People who sit and e-mail endlessly on their Blackberry's seem to have no real perception of how people possibly survived before business was a 24-hour world. People who sit on facebook and deal with their "virtual social life" rather than going out and actually meeting people in the real social world have fallen victim to what is the technological deterioration of the modern world.
Note
To clarify, I am not trying to imply that eventually everyone will be at home on computers not interacting with one another. I am just trying to point out that if more is not done to point out this problem, than eventually a greater percentage of our society will ultimately be about virtual interaction and our world will become less and less tangible.
This is a great first post, I like how you were able to get your point across without over exaggerating the issue, as most people might have done with this topic, you took a very realistic stance with this topic which can be hard to do sometimes. The idea that we would prefer to have online interactions over real ones is a very compelling argument with a lot of evidence to back it up. I like the point you made about people becoming lazier since we have instant access to things, I've seen many examples of this in my own experience (myself included sometimes). To make this post better I'd recommend that you think of solutions to this problem. People like to find problems but spend very little time finding solutions, I think your post would be much more interesting if you could think of ways to get people to be less lazy and favor real interaction over virtual ones. All in all, great post, I could tell you spent time on this and really thought about the topic
ReplyDeleteJakob,
ReplyDeleteFirst off I really liked your catchy title, "Brave New World?"
Your whole post flowed very nicely. I really liked how you compared and contrasted the iphone to many other single-use devices. I also thought it was funny that you put a picture of a guy smoking a phone as if it were a bowl (were you trying to be symbolic? people getting a high from a virtual world, all these devices making people lazy like a high from ganj? that's clever.).
I liked how your main idea followed both of yours questions, "Is this a sign of progress? Or, is this the first step towards the social deterioration of our modern world?" It was also nice that you added in your little note otherwise I would've felt you were being a tad dramatic.
I agree with your post completely. All these electronics have made me lazy and less motivated to do something active like running around the reservoir which I used to do 5 times a week but has become maybe 1 every 2 weeks; instead I'll stay inside playing rockband or something else that doesn't let me be alone with my own thoughts.
Overall I really liked your post, you write well.
See you tomorrow, peace.
Marco,
ReplyDeleteThank you for taking the time to comment on my blog. I really thought that what you said was useful and it made me re-evaluate how I structured my post. I got the sense that you didn't just read through my post, but considered it and than shaped your response based on what I wrote, not the gist of what I wrote.
I realized that although I do articulate the problem of technology creating a modern society which is apathetic, you recognized that I do not offer any solution as to how I would solve this problem.
The idea that I came up with after reading your post, was that it should become more advertised that their is a great value in physical activity, and youth sports organizations need to be emphasized to prevent this trend from continuing over the next generations. This could be done in a similar way to the "Verb" ad campaign on the Nickelodeon cartoon network, which focused on daily activity and healthy active children.
I think that as valid as your comment was, my post was supposed to be about the problem and describing the effect of technology on society. It was not really intended to discuss the solution to something which may or may not be a problem (in my opinion it is).
What can be said though, is that you brought up a "missing part" of my post which I would probably write about if I were to expand my post into a larger essay or piece. I really was wondering the same thing as you when i had finished my post, but I decided not to go into the solutions at the time.
Beatrice,
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, gook looks on the comment. I thought that you put your time into it and I really was interested by how you applied your own experience about jogging less and less as you use technology more and more, to what i wrote about in my post.
The reflective aspect of your post was quite helpful in how I looked at what I had written, and than concluded about my post. Whether or not I felt that I had written standard rhetoric, or if I had a realistic point about our society was answered by your post.
The fact that you expressed regret not being as physically active due to technology, showed me that just because someone isn't highly active doesn't mean that they don't recognize it. I realized that the danger is that we don't recognize the lack of activity, not so much that we don't participate in the physical activity. If we recognize it, than we can correct it, but if we don't, than frankly, we're fucked.
Your comment on my post was alot better simply for the reason that it was very pertinent to what I actually wrote. Your point recognized my main arguments and compared them to a real world setting, making your comments really thought provoking.
I really liked how you recognized that I was slightly dramatic in my main piece, and because of that, your comment showed me that you understood why I added in that little P.S. at the end of my post.
Once again, thank you for carefully responding to my post, and I appreciate that you understood the points that I was trying to get across.