Technology is everywhere. It’s in our homes, in shopping centers, in schools. We are surrounded by technology. It is the car we drive from place to place, it is phone that’s always in our pocket, it is the automated bathroom that flushes the toilet, turns the water on and off, puts soap and paper towels in our hands without us doing a thing besides move. Everything we do, checking out items, turning lights on in a room, sharpening pencils, can and usually involves technology. It affects us every day and will continue to do so for the rest of our lives and for the future generations beyond us.
Most don’t usually take a step back and really look at what all we use technology for. Some people may be really surprised (or disgusted) at how much it actually is implicated in our daily lives. From the very beginning of our days, we are awoken by an alarm clock, walk down to the fridge that keeps our milk cool, pull clean dishes out of the dishwasher and eat our breakfast. That’s just the beginning of most Americans’ mornings. If we didn’t have technology, our lives would be extremely altered.
After trying to keep track of my technology use, I realized that I don’t really do anything without having technology incorporated into what I’m doing. At home, during spring break, I tried to monitor how much I use technology in my normal routine because I obviously am constantly using lights and my laptop for schoolwork. I was blown away by the numbers after really looking at how much I use of what. The TV (though I did figure I’d be using it more since I was on break) was on a lot of the time, even for background noise. I used it for music, to watch shows and movies, and to play video games. Same with the computer. I did use my laptop for school a good bit over break, but I also spent a lot of time on social media sites, shopping sites, games, and for Netflix. My phone use was impossible to measure because I’m constantly on it to look things up quick, check my email, text and call friends and family, update social networks, and listen to music. In fact, I didn’t realize how much I used my phone for music until I was conscience of it. I play my music for a good portion of my day: I listen to it while I make breakfast, shower, get ready, drive, and study. I also use it to wake up and fall asleep, and to add background noise for when I’m hanging out with friends. Even when I was playing a game on the computer or playing a video game, I had to have my music on. I never realized how huge music is in my life, and how I can’t get it unless I use some sort of technology (phone, ipad, computer, CD player, stero, radio).
All these realizations made me wonder two things: how did people live before without all this technology and how much do I rely on it in my own life?
I decided to tackle one question at a time, so I first focused on how technology has grown and become more potent in our society over time. To do this, I talked to a few people. The people I talked to was my mom, my grandma, and my neighbor. All of them are a variety of ages which helped give me a better picture of the timeline of the growing use of technology. A lot of them had a lot to say about the different questions I asked and their participation really showed how each generation’s views vary. It was cool to see some pattern and consistency in my answers, like when I asked the question of what was some influential technology that they really utilized when they were my age. They all used technology that involved their music listening experience. My grandma, the oldest generation, seemed excited to tell me about the transistor radio. She said it really made listening to music easier and more portable, because before they used tube radios. “They were pretty large and heavy, which really confined listening to it, wherever your radio was”, she had told me over the phone when I asked her to describe to me what a tube radio was. My mom, the second oldest generation, had told me that walkmans were a big thing because you could really just plug in your headphones and take your music anywhere, which was an awesome concept at the time. Then my neighbor, the youngest generation I interviewed, told me about CD players coming out in the early 90’s when she was my age. She said that it was cool to switch from cassettes to CDs, and that CDs were much easier to store than cassettes which made it convenient and smart to switch over.
However, the similarities became rarer throughout the rest of the interview. I began to ask questions about how they perceive technology and how readily they are to embrace new forms of it. Each generation had very different views. My grandma, who just got a cell phone a couple years ago (not by choice) has yet to have used a computer even. She said that she was very much against the expanding technology, which she makes plainly obvious. She really didn’t see a use for it since people were able to do without before and feels that it is what leads to a lot of problems with communication and human-to-human interaction. Then, when I interviewed my mom, she admitted that she usually is against new technology but she is willing to try it when really pushed or pressured to do so. And then, once she has it, she can’t live without it. She then admits that sometimes she wishes she didn’t try and take up the new technology just because she feels dependent on things like her phone, computer, and even her DVR. Finally, I asked the question to my neighbor who says she’s actually always excited to try the “latest stuff”. She is always the first to get the new android phone, tablet, and she is always the first to try the latest thing (such as blue ray).
After the interviews were conducted, I started to feel like there might be a bigger pattern among the generations. I could easily say that I feel like I’m the same as my neighbor in how I embrace new technologies. It makes me wonder if people’s attitudes toward technology is mostly affected by the generation that they are born in. The more we are grown up around it, the more we get used to it and see technological advances as a good thing. I think we tend to get allow the idea of technology to overshadow with the potential negative effects. I really feel like future generations are going to become more accepting and more attached growing technology. I’m nervous that they will become more dependent than we are now, which we can’t deny that we are. In the novel, ‘The Feed’, people became so dependent on their feeds that they lost the ability to be creative and think for their selves, they didn’t become as educated, they lacked social skills, and they basically needed the feed for everything that they did.
I fear that that could be in the near future someday while at the same time I’m not scared enough to give up things such as my phone or computer now, which makes me more nervous. I’ve realized how much I depend on my technology for everything I do. I need a car to drive to work, I need a phone for media and communication, I need an alarm clock to wake me up each morning. If I had to give up half of the technology and electronics that we have now, I honestly don’t know if I would be able to really too much. I recognize that I’m fully dependent on it all and I’m nervous that future generations will be even worse.**This essay was written by a student in FYS 102 - Are We Cyborgs? - Spring 2013
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