At what point, if any, does technology stop being beneficial to society and start limiting us?
While at first, it seemed a hard question to answer, we ended up getting some really great opinions and new outlooks from students in our discussion. Ultimately, the conclusion that we came to as a group was that in the space of monetarily-driven America, technology has been too focused on moving forward and creating new, bigger, better products, rather than focusing on covering the tracks of detriment that technology leaves behind socially, and setting limits on technological advances.
One particular example that we discussed was communication via technology. While it may seem like a great idea to be able to keep in touch with friends and family 24/7 through devices like cell phones and the internet, it seems to have been forgotten that distance makes the heart grow fonder. An excess of technology in communications has superconnected Americans, often to the point of withdrawal. In a world where we're constantly bombarded with overwhelming amounts of technology, it's not difficult to sometimes want to retract back into the ways of the past. Connecting this back to my point of social communications, I believe that the accessibility of conversation has made Americans more socially withdrawn. Conversations that can exist at any time often lose their meaning as true conversation. This, in turn, limits the true social potential of Americans using technology to communicate.
I can see I've already gotten a little bit off-topic, but I'd like to take another tangent. Another topic that we covered in our discussion on AS Day was the idea of over-reliance on technology. This can be seen pretty clearly and pretty constantly, especially in the time and place we exist. Even just yesterday in class, the overwhelming ecstasy that emerged in class after we were told that we would not have to hand-write our final essays illustrates this reliance quite well. We all know how to hand-write an essay; we didn't spend so much time learning penmanship and cursive in elementary school for nothing. While typing surely provides an advantage, it's just an interesting thing to think about. Should it really make that big of a difference? Shouldn't the content of the essay be more important than the means by which it was composed? Could typing an essay be limiting to our writing skills in any way? Don't get me wrong; I'm as happy as the next student about the nature of our final exam. I'm not sure what I'm trying to prove or solve at this point, but it's just something that's been on my mind.
Overall, American Studies Day, and especially my own student panel, was a great learning experience for me. It's sometimes difficult to relate class topics to the real world, but the day itself was an amazing look at the ways in which the topics we cover in American Studies can be applied to every day life. The way that all the topics connected was incredible, and when I was presenting I really felt like I was a part of something worthwhile and applicable IRL. Good feeling.
One particular example that we discussed was communication via technology. While it may seem like a great idea to be able to keep in touch with friends and family 24/7 through devices like cell phones and the internet, it seems to have been forgotten that distance makes the heart grow fonder. An excess of technology in communications has superconnected Americans, often to the point of withdrawal. In a world where we're constantly bombarded with overwhelming amounts of technology, it's not difficult to sometimes want to retract back into the ways of the past. Connecting this back to my point of social communications, I believe that the accessibility of conversation has made Americans more socially withdrawn. Conversations that can exist at any time often lose their meaning as true conversation. This, in turn, limits the true social potential of Americans using technology to communicate.
I can see I've already gotten a little bit off-topic, but I'd like to take another tangent. Another topic that we covered in our discussion on AS Day was the idea of over-reliance on technology. This can be seen pretty clearly and pretty constantly, especially in the time and place we exist. Even just yesterday in class, the overwhelming ecstasy that emerged in class after we were told that we would not have to hand-write our final essays illustrates this reliance quite well. We all know how to hand-write an essay; we didn't spend so much time learning penmanship and cursive in elementary school for nothing. While typing surely provides an advantage, it's just an interesting thing to think about. Should it really make that big of a difference? Shouldn't the content of the essay be more important than the means by which it was composed? Could typing an essay be limiting to our writing skills in any way? Don't get me wrong; I'm as happy as the next student about the nature of our final exam. I'm not sure what I'm trying to prove or solve at this point, but it's just something that's been on my mind.
Overall, American Studies Day, and especially my own student panel, was a great learning experience for me. It's sometimes difficult to relate class topics to the real world, but the day itself was an amazing look at the ways in which the topics we cover in American Studies can be applied to every day life. The way that all the topics connected was incredible, and when I was presenting I really felt like I was a part of something worthwhile and applicable IRL. Good feeling.
3 comments:
Interesting question and opinions. I don't know if I entirely agree with your two main arguments, though.
"I believe that the accessibility of conversation has made Americans more socially withdrawn. Conversations that can exist at any time often lose their meaning as true conversation."
Can you elaborate a bit more about why or how this happens? I've read that teens who text frequently tend to view text conversations as pressing as face-to-face ones. Does that show less care for conversations as a whole due to conversation overload, or does that mean they're just having more conversations that they really care about? I'm not sure. But I don't think it's necessarily the case that we care less about conversations if we have more access to them. If we're increasing our reliance on having them all the time, and go through a 'withdrawal' in some cases, can't that also be interpreted as people caring more about conversing in general? Perhaps it might show a decline in the ability to prioritize one conversation over another, or put conversations in perspective, but I'm not sure if it necessarily leads to less social engagement. I think, from people who are the most socially active to the absolute least, technology tends to create more engagement (but perhaps sometimes it is more artificial in some way, although I don't think it can be summed up to a general relationship like 'there is an inverse relationship between the amount of total conversations vs. worth of each conversation.')
And I think your second argument, that preferring digital writing is over-reliance, is somewhat flawed-- although I would agree there are times when technology is relied upon too much for things that can be done manually. Simply as a matter of fact, computers make writing and doing all sorts of work significantly more efficient. The work isn't necessarily done better, but it can happen quicker, and as a result it allows us to do more of it within the same amount of time. If we were writing an essay in 80 minutes, this would be very important-- having the writing in word allows you to keep all of the writing in perspective and see it all written legibly. If you want to go back and fix mistakes, you can do it by simply clicking back and deleting it, without erasing.
And to take a stab at answering the main question, take a look at this article and see what you think of it:
http://dieoff.org/page134.htm
To sum it up quickly, he argues that any time humans solve problems, there is an increase in complexity. You want to write a paper, so you use a paper and pen. But then people want to solve the problem of having handwriting be illegible (or something like that), so the complexity is upped and you get the type writer, but it has payoffs in the long run that make the complexity worth it. But then there are still inefficiencies with the typewriter-- you can't go back and delete-- so you invent a digital word processor. This takes a huge leap in complexity, but the complexity yields benefits far greater than its costs (digital word processing, flash drives to transport info easily, online dictionary, other computer programs, etc).
Although the example is somewhat fabricated, each change requires some adjusting to but it ends up being worth it. But so long as the yields outweigh the problem solving's complexity, technology is beneficial to society. Interestingly, the article uses some historical examples where disaster at the societal level can be in part attributed to problem solving (i.e. technology) is too complex for it to be beneficial.
So a good comparison of this to over-reliance on technology is the PPT KILLS presentation from way at the beginning of the year. Power point can be effective for lecturing, or it can be a monster of complexity that communicates nothing of added value. So, if technology has more costs than benefits, that's when it's bad for society. This is very basic, but then you can't predict its future costs all the time (ppt-->shuttle disaster), meaning you'd need to answer the above question on a case-by-case basis (for different technologies).
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