As I currently write this paper, I’m multi-tasking at the same time by browsing through Facebook to keep track of my friend’s updates, checking my GroupWise email, responding to my latest text message on my iPhone and even watching TV on my recently purchased 32 inch Samsung LCD. I’ve become so consumed, so dependent on technology that my life would start to feel inconsequential without it. I’m not alone in this at all as it is society as a whole which has become so accustomed to technology and modern improvements that it can no longer thrive without them.This modern issue is exactly what writers like Emerson and Thoreau foresaw in their time.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, writing nearly two centuries ago, feared that, “The arts and technology of each era are only window dressing and do not give people life. That the harm of improved technology may balance out its good” (Self Reliance). For Emerson and many others in the 19th century, technology was constantly being replaced and thus provided no real meaning to us.Although, they recognized the benefits that certain inventions could provide, they felt the excitement technology provoked was counterproductive in the end as it only served as a distraction. Emerson’s friend Henry David Thoreau shared similar thoughts in his essay Walden.
Thoreau, although fascinated by technology, saw a series of inventions like the loom, railroad and telegraph that would radically change the world as they made way for the Industrial Revolution. Because of this, Thoreau saw technology as a tool for the destruction of society.He felt that technology and modern improvements would eventually come to control us as we became consumed by them. What Thoreau was truly arguing was that we would become so dependent on technology that we would become distracted from more important questions of life. Unfortunately what Thoreau foresaw has become reality.
Today’s society is more dependent on technology and continuous improvements than it ever was before and it will continue to become worse. As technology continues to play an ever increaseing role in our lives, we will reach a point where it will have such a controlling effect on our lives that society will become stagnant without it.Thoreau’s first critique of technology is first noted when he is discussing the issues with clothing and considers, “Perhaps we are led oftener by the love of novelty, and a regard for the opinions of men, in procuring it, than by a true utility”. Instead of wanting the newest gadget for an intended purpose or benefit, we desire the most up to date device simply because it is the newest or as way to impress our peers. We have become infatuated with wanting the newest features and deluded ourselves into believing that they are necessary for everyday life.
Thoreau comments that, “Men think that it is essential that the Nation have commerce, and export ice, and talk through a telegraph, and ride thirty miles an hour…”. Similar to the society of Thoreau’s time, we think our iPhone must be able to record HD video, our MacBook must have the newest and quickest software and our television must be up to date with the latest LED technology. We never even question why we must have these unnecessary technologies and improvements as we become consumed by them.When Apple released the iPhone 4 last summer, I remember walking past the Apple store and seeing some of the so called “Apple fanatics” holding their iPhone 3GS phones in preparation for an upgrade. I admit the iPhone 4 looked much sharper and the front camera was a nice touch but the phone was only a slight improvement on the 3GS and it actually came with quite a few bugs. Regardless, millions of people mindlessly lined up to get the latest and most popular phone in anticipation of parading it around to their friends.
There was no real benefit to upgrading their phones but people did so anyways.This leads to the issue of phones in general. By definition, a phone’s purpose is simply a tool for communication but people have become obsessed over its other unnecessary applications like games and online abilities. Although, satisfying our need for constant stimulation, they merely serve as distractions from the device’s intended use. In actuality, the iPhone and other technologies are not essential for our everyday life but they have come to have an unsought control over our lives and therein lies the problem.
Thoreau also argues that technology serves as a distraction from more important things in life.He claims, “Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract us from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end”. Although Thoreau is not opposed to all technological progress, he sees it as the blocking of or substitute for “serious things” like intellectual and spiritual progress. The internet demonstrates this problem today. While the internet has great potential for education and communication, many see it as a tool for get-rich schemes, stock speculation, instant messaging, senseless internet forums, online shopping and especially social networking.
The many worthwhile advantages on the net are greatly outnumbered by the junk which merely serve as distractions as Thoreau argues. These distractions from technology follow us throughout our lives whether we are work trying to make a living or attending school to get an education. According to Canadian journalist and author of In Praise of Slowness, Carol Honore, “The typical office worker is interrupted every three minutes by a phone call, e-mail, instant message or other distraction. The problem is that it takes about eight uninterrupted minutes for our brains to get into a really creative state”.Despite the amount of distractions most of these technological devices cause for us, we refuse to part with them as we’ve learned to become reliant on them and they essentially become a means of survival. It doesn’t stop there though.
As Honore mentioned, the distractions they cause us prevent our brains from being creative. Creative human ingenuity was what actually created the computer, one of man kind’s greatest technological advancements. Although, the computer was originally designed for calculating complex mathematical equations or in other words to supplement human intelligence, we have clearly wavered from its original intention.We as humans have instead become slothful as a result of the control these incredible machines have in our lives. Case in point: I admit I have been listening to Afrojack’s “Take Over Control” on YouTube while writing this paragraph and will most definitely use spell check several times after finishing this paper.
What’s interesting is one of the song’s primary lines is “Plug it in and turn me on! ” Not only am I allowing myself to be distracted by the computer, I’m listening to a song which ironically is what the computer is doing to me.I’ve literally plugged it in and its now “taking over control” of my mind and preventing me from finishing the remainder of this paper. This self-imposed takeover of our minds was already noted by Thoreau when he insists that, “men have become tools of their tools”. Today, we have accepted the control technology has over us as we become slaves to it.
It is especially noticeable in our education and social lives. One cannot go a day without the use of technology at Santa Clara University. Professors require you to do research, submit typed papers to Turnitin. com or use Camino to do a short written assignment.
Most of your communication with professors and peers is through GroupWise and other online email services. Only a matter of weeks ago, the campus wide internet crashed throughout the day for a number of hours and caused students across the campus to stress over assignment deadlines and not being able to check their emails. Students felt cornered with the pressure this put upon them as they frantically walked throughout the library searching for a computer with any signs of being able to go online. Most of them didn’t even consider other methods of completing their assignments as the hours passed by.This overwhelming control technology has over our lives also continues into our social lives.
When students aren’t working or when they are working for that matter, they cannot go a few minutes without keeping up to date with their Facebook or texting. So, when the internet is down or their phone dies on them, their social lives collapse before them. Society has learned to communicate through technology and thus face to face interactions are simply deemed too strenuous. Thus, when technology, such an integral part of our lives, is gone even for the slightest amount of time, we become confused and frustrated.
We stop everything we are doing and sometimes even ask, “Why bother? ” It is clear that society has come to rely on technology to the point where it asserts an excessive amount of control over our lives. Despite this, I’m not arguing that technology is inherently a bad thing in itself. It is actually a normal part of our everyday lives that advances society in many ways such as allowing us to communicate to someone across the world from our home and allowing us to travel extraordinary distances in a matter of hours.Still, it causes disruption in our lives when it breaks down and has enough flaws for us to question its reliability considering how much it impacts us. Thoreau argues it causes, “positive hinderances to the elevation of mankind”.
The reason it holds us back is our response to it. We have come to solely depend on it in many aspects of our lives. It is no longer a choice whether to rely on technology. It has established its role in our society and it seems as if there is little hope in turning back. Without it, society will waste away until it is no more.
