Editorial: “From convenience to ignorance” by Onehunnidt

 

From convenience to ignorance. Dependent on technology.

At the office today, I was completing a shrink report which requires me to do simple math as part of a 5000+ column spreadsheet. While using the calculator app on the Mac Book, I began to think: “Man where would we be without calculators?”

It’d take hours on hours for me to have done all of this math by hand, even though it was only subtraction and addition. Big ups to the dude that created these!

Then I sat back and looked at everything in front of me: Two cell phones (blackberry and G2), a brand new Mac Book with dual monitors, headphones blasting Jay Z on pandora from one screen while Netflix is playing some low budget comedy on mute on the other. Technology is all we know.  Literally, what would our generation do without these “luxuries”?

Think about it, how many people lose their minds when the remote is lost under their covers? How many people cannot function when their cell phone’s battery has died? I think we have become so dependent of these things that it has weakened us, intellectually and in the sense of having the will to do for ourselves. Our technological “advancements” are our biggest crutches.

As a 20 something urban American, its doesn’t take much to see how boastful our media is towards instilling the impulse that America is superior to other places in the world, and one main reason is because we have access to all these material things that make our lives “better”. Lets look at the term better and evaluate that.

 

–adjective, compar. of good with best as superl.
1.of superior quality or excellence

2.morally superior; more virtuous

We have many things to our disposal that were created as a convenience. However, once a convenience becomes the only thing that we rely on, we forget how to live without it.  We bask in our own ignorance and now dependent on devices, I’m not sure if “better” is the correct terminology.

Examples can more accurately explain what I mean:

• We now have microwaves and fast food to ease the time of cooking a regular meal, but now many people do not know how to cook at all, are over weight, and spend lots more to eat unhealthily. *with the extreme difficulty for the farming industry and new found mass produced genetically modified food from cows, beef, fish, and veggies/fruit, this issue will only worsen in time.
• We have Smart phones which handle everything from communication to navigational systems. Without using the navigational system or “Map Quest” many people don’t know directions out side of their own neighborhood. (not to mention remembering someone’s number)
• Not only that, but do we even know how to communicate and have real life interpersonal relationships anymore?  We rather tweet, blog, facebook, IM, text, etc than have a face to face conversation. Social networking has replaced networking, hell and being “social” at all
• Many people don’t know any math beyond computers/calculators
• Most people don’t read or know how to find any information without Google

…and the list goes on.

 

I don’t even really want to get into how dependent we have become on computers, the Internet has now become more important than people are. Kind of scary if you know that a Bill was passed giving the President a “Kill switch” on the Internet. Heaven forbid a situation arises like what happened in Egypt where all Internet and access to the outside world was removed by the government..we’d all die instantaneously.

Seriously, are we really “better” than 3rd world countries? Not socially or economically but in other means. There are people in this world that can go outside, start a fire, grow some crops and feed a village for months with less than half of what we throw away on the regular.  There are people that can travel miles of countryside  land and know it like the back of their hand without any Google Maps navigation to help them.  The have an intelligence that we undermined.  They are dependent upon their minds.
Interesting concept

This whole dependence on technology eerily reminds me of movies like The Matrix and Terminator, where humans have become slaves to their own creations. The machines need humans to live, but humans need machines more and eventually the artificial intelligence makes the machines smart enough to exterminate the human race.  If you think about it, its already happen…in our minds

 

Just my thoughts. Get out the box. There is no box.

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