Whether you like it or not technology keeps creeping into every facet of our daily lives. The way I see it is you have two choices: embrace it, utilize it, take absolute advantage being at the forefront of the technological revolution or sit back and stew, watching your 13″ black and white TV, cooking TV dinners in the oven, while dialing (Yes, I said DIALING) your rotary phone to call your friend to swing by and watch the game.
Unfortunately for you, your friend has pulled out his portable navigation system, jumped in his hybrid car and has navigated himself to a new bar a few towns over, this is the bar that all your friends were talking about, you know the one with a giant HDTV to watch the game. He knew to go there this night because one of your mutual friends called him on his cell phone while he was driving home from work, using his “hands-free” Bluetooth earpiece, of course. The unfortunate thing is that you also received a call but unfortunately you never hooked that answering machine up to your rotary phone so you missed the call.
Ok, I realize that there would be very few people under the age of 80 that would fall in the latter category, but I just wanted to make a point. It seems like there just comes a time in everyone’s life where they just say “NO MORE TECHNOLOGY” and then they refuse to be a part of any new advances in technology. I don’t know why this happens, it’s like when you mean well and buy your grandparents a DVD player so they can enjoy the “better quality” movies than the old fashion VHS tapes. You just never realized for a second that your grandparents reached the stage in their lives where their minds refuse to learn any new technology. The idea that in order to play a movie you cannot just push play while channel 3 is on, but now must change the input from TV 1 to TV 2 is just so foreign to them. They accept the inferior quality in order to NOT have to learn something new. As counter intuitive as this sounds there seems comes this point in everyone’s life where they reach this point. I guess…
Hopefully I never lose my drive to want to learn. The technology doesn’t have to be new but I’d hate to think that I’d wake up one day and say to myself, “Ok, as of right now I know everything that I’ll ever know. I refuse to allow anything new in my mind”.
Unfortunately, some people I see have reached that point, and I’m not only talking about 90 year old people, I see this in younger folks as well.
I realize I haven’t actually spoke of actual pieces of technology that I use or would love to use we can always post reviews of things we like (and don’t like) in the future but for now I just wanted to open the discussion up to see what you think about this?
Is technology good or bad?
The argument can go either way, and clearly you know what side I stand on in this debate.
Does it make our lives better or worse?
Some would look at the advances in from analog to cable to HDTV as an amazing thing, yet others feel that the lure of the larger, better quality (and much cheaper) technologies keep people more alienated from each other, having more of a reason to sit inside on the couch instead of going out or playing cards with friends. I guess I can see some relevance to that argument when you think about kids and say, video games. Back in the old days (Well, not THAT old) you had the Atari video game system, and it was new, novel and fun. But it was used more as something to do on a rainy day or at night when you had to be home. Now the video game consoles have games that look practically life-like, and kids can put headsets on and play and chat with friends from around the globe. Now the argument to be made is that kids don’t go out and play as much as they used to go out and play. True, but the opposite argument can be made as well, I don’t know if it’s just my neck of the woods but parents these days don’t let their kids just go out and play anymore. They drive the kids everywhere, have to know what their doing, who their doing it with, where are they doing it, and why the hell would you rather be there than at home???? All this is done at the same time they track their kids via satellite GPS on the 10 year old’s cell phone that plays better video games then all the Atari games combined. When I was a kid by age 12 I hopped on a train or a bus and went places (to a mall, a friends wherever) I knew what time I had to be home and made sure to get home by that time. (Or else “The Belt”)… Ok, I digress…that’s a story for another day.
So, is technology a good thing or the root of all evil?
As I’m sure you can tell I’m a big fan of technology, from computers, cable TV and the Internet all the way back to fresh water, dishwashers and flushing toilet bowls. Before you start criticizing technology decide where you draw the line. At what point in history do you think technology is ok..
If you think about it, fire was pretty hi-tech to the Neanderthals at Gibraltar.
~Scott
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