Fast Technology and Faster Lives

With people living in the twenty-first century, they are living like there is no tomorrow. Each day grows shorter, and each second is filled with one more thing to do. People aren't able to live as care free and easily as they used to. Life is being thrown at us at a much more rapid speed. People want to go faster, they want to do more, they want to make more money, they want bigger and better lives. What we used to have in the past is not working for today's future. Technology is what is powering the world of the twenty-first century.
Cars, phones, television, internet, texting. Those are all things that are moving our world at a much faster pace. Many people think these are all good things, and others think it is a step in the wrong direction. Without this technology many new advances would not have been made. With the technology more accidents have been stirred up. What is the correct way to go? Technology or the Older, Simpler Days?
Technology-Technology has helped many people be in multple places at once. Cell phones are allowing people to communicate with anyone, anywhere. You can contact grandma all the way from China while you are in America. It reaches anywhere in the world while you are working or running a business. Cell phones also work as a day planner. It tells you where to go, when to be there, when to eat, how to dress. They are replacing almost everything, that is why you see so many people with them attached to their ears. They are the biggest and best craze in the world. People go out and buy a new phone almost every month. Something new comes out and they have to get it. One that is easier to text, bigger keypad, holds more music, or looks cooler than the older one because it flips sideways instead of upward. Another thing are cars. Everyone has to have a cooler, newer, faster, prettier car than their best friend or their neighbor. Cars are what get us everywhere, we can not get anywhere without our cars. Instead of having a car for the mother and father, everyone has to have one or two. Cars are turning into something that isn't just for practical use, but for aesthetics. You have an image if you have a nice car, or if you multiple cars. The fancier the car the more money you have. That isn't always the case. Television is the best way of entertainment, news, relaxation, and a way of doing nothing. People don't want to slow their life down by reading a paper, they want their information fast. Television provides a quick way to learn about the weather or the latest in the stock market. Internet is an even faster way of accessing information. One click and you have the front page of yahoo and news is at your fingertips. Click the button again and you are watching a funny video of two kids singing in Japan that was made five minutes prior. It is so fast that people are able to keep in contact with the world and what is happening at that very second. Technology has advanced our world in allowing for anything and everything we want. We can get movies, songs, pictures, or anything else for free and within seconds. The old days didn't even come close to matching that speed.
Older, Simpler Days-"Back in my day, times were simpler." Many old people have told me something along that line. They think because there wasn't as much to worry about, the times were better than they are now. Kids weren't being abducted, brains weren't being rotted by television, people were slower and cared about their fellow neighbor, times were "peachy." Now with all these perverts allowed to gain access to any young child, more crimes are targeted towards the youth. In the older days kids rode around on their bikes without talking to their parents the whole day. There wasn't as much worry back then as there is now. They didn't worry about playing with mercury in thermometers or riding their bikes without helmets. People watched out for one another. Now people can only talk through phones or through a text. Back then people said hi to one another and took time to care about people other than themself. You didn't worry about your old neighbor giving candy to your kid, they were just being nice. People now are always worrying about that person creeping behind the bushes. Television wasn't as important because kids had an imagination. Now kids are being told what imagination is by playing video games. Back in the older days kids made up their own games. They turned a sock and a stick into a game that would keep them entertained for hours. Now kids have to be told how to be entertained, they can't come up with it on their own.
With each of these two ways of looking at technology and how it was before technology, there are pros and cons to each. With anything that is introduced or any way of life, there will be negatives. There is nothing that is absolutely perfect for everyone. Some people would argue until they are blue in the face that cell phones are better, and others would say that talking to someone face to face is far better. With our culture the target ages of each technology is growing younger. Kids are using phones when they are still in Elementary school, when they can't go anywhere without a parent. Technology will only advance as our culture advances into the future. The good will always be accompanied by the bad. The only thing that will change are peoples' opinions on whether they will accept these condtions or not.

The Freedom of 2009

The Freedom of 2009

 

            Imagine that it was the year 2009.  Your technological possibilities are endless.  You could communicate with people all over the world with a click of a mouse.  You could write and say almost anything you want for everyone to see.  There are no limitations to your technological imagination.  It will be a world where communication has no barriers or rules.  It would be a time where only the youngest and most learned minds could comprehend this new found informational wealth.  A technological world so advanced that it will consume almost everyone all over the world.

            What is really more astounding than this information itself, is that it applies to our world today.  It is 2009!  As the youth of this decade, we are experiencing the booming growth that exponentially out does itself everyday.  Technology continues to become faster, easier, and more efficient every second.  It is difficult to try to explain in words how much of a role this newfound information plays in our lives everyday.  We are known as the technology generation.  It is such huge part of our lives that without it, we feel a void.  Try to take a phone from a young man or woman.  See how long you could keep it before they throw a fit or strangle you until you drop it.  We came out of the womb “texting” our mom, “skyping” our friends from across the world, and “blogging” our peers to share opinions whenever the breeze blows us to.  The previous terms must even include quotations because before this push of technology began to sweep the world, these were unrecognized by anyone.  We know no other world.  This technology allows us to talk to people in real time all the way around the globe.  To meet people and experience cultures that would have otherwise gone unknown.  It is astounding to hear myself say these words.  Yet, it has become a worldly norm to have access to so many newfound resources.

            So now the question stands.  Is all of this beneficial?  Is this tech-savvy world worthy of having faith and belief in?  Is it truly good to have this freedom and this never ending growth of communication and technology? Some would agree.  There is more than enough stature to stand and fight in this side of the subjective opinion.  The opportunities and communicational benefits that have presented themselves are undeniable.  Almost everything in the world today has become more efficient and easy that ever imagined.  The list of benefits truly is substantial.  Yet, with every great occurrence, comes an equally present defense.

            What if it isn’t completely beneficial?  Is it a detrimental crutch to the youth of this age?  Has it become a world where hard work has been shoved to the side by a technological solution?  Have the standards once set by our founding fathers been abused and mistook?  There is more than enough good argument to agree.  Technology has become solutions to many previously solved human problems or restraints.  Many people today have become dependant on this world constant communication.  Has the simple pleasure of quiet alone time become extinct?  As every second goes by, the world is slowly more and more consumed by new, bigger, better ways of living.  There is always a new phone, computer, or gadget that has outdone the previous.  Is there an end? Could this end in a corrupt society that has become engulfed by what was intended to be a positive, beneficial solution to better our planet?  To speak down technology totally is a crime.  There have been unimaginable accomplishments that have occurred from this boom.  However, it can control your life.  Anything new and intriguing has a hidden addictive quality that is saran wrapped by the shiny desire to have more.  Our desires are endless.  However, our resources are finite.  An economic mindset considers that everything in the world used as a resource is scarce.  Can we ever find happiness in this crazy new world?

            It is hard to set on one solution.  However, understanding this new information is the best precaution to avoid the negative side of technology.  When you understand both views of any topic, you are able to form an educational opinion.  An individual’s view on a topic varies from person to person.  Therefore, you may not be able to solve this debate completely.  Yet, it is a comfort to know that there are pros and cons to each new occurrence we face.  It is a comfort that we can consider what is best for us as an individual and accept this crazy world whatever way we see fit.   

Technology: Positive, Negative, or Both

Technology has rapidly changed the lives of millions of people across the world. Technology has come along way especially in the past ten years. Technology has allowed people to connect with other people very easily. You can now talk to someone on the other side of the world or send messages through a cell phone. People can even use video to communicate over the internet. It has made it very easy to keep in touch with old friends. There are so many things you can do with technology, so many you really can’t even list all of them.
Technology can’t always be just a good thing. With such things as email, facebook, and myspace almost everything can now be seen on the web. A lot of personal information is put up on the internet that almost anyone can get a hold of. Also now people are able to pay bills and check financial records on the internet. This can also be viewed by hackers very easily as well.
Belief and doubt can really help someone see the whole picture of a topic and not just have a biased opinion. Believing in a topic can help you get a good grasp on it. If you believe in something you are going to put your full effort into it. But believing may not always a positive thing if you believe in something that is wrong. Then again doubt is not always a bad thing. It may not always be a good thing to believe in something that is not true.

Technology and Us

Technology is starting to consume our daily lives. We all use some form of technology constantly throughout the day, whether it is making a call on a cell phone or popping some food in the microwave. There is strong debate on whether this technological boom in today’s society has actually been beneficial or problematic to interactions and community. Many aspects of our lives have changed in even the past decade and overall I believe that technology as a whole has improved communication and community. However, I am not saying that all uses of technology have been improvements.

Community has drastically changed in the past several years thanks to technological advances. People can now connect with friends and family virtually anywhere on the planet. This allows people to keep friendships and keep family members informed on family matters even from long distances. Social wellbeing of individuals has been improved by this advancement. Thanks to cellular phones people can now be contacted wherever they are throughout the day. This is beneficial especially in case of emergencies and other less dire circumstances. People can also now interact with and meet way more people with social networking sites like facebook, myspace, and even youtube. These sites can help join people with common interest together no matter how far away they may be. Information is also so easily accessible in today’s society. It is much easier to search for specific information to improve learning.

Technology also has some down sides to counter the up sides. Cell phones are helpful in many ways; however being able to be reached at any time can be a problem. Cell phones have made life, for some, more hectic, stressful, and at a faster pace. Everyone knows a person who seems to have a cell phone glued to their ear at all times. These people may be making business calls or doing something else that may be important, but it is also important to be able to relax everyday and enjoy life. I believe that there are families that have suffered from the over use of technology. Kids constantly on the computer or playing video games and parents making important phone calls, decreases the amount of time spent together as a family and that can be extremely harmful to that family. I also mentioned earlier that people can now interact with much more people and make new friends thanks to technology. It can also be argued that technology has decreased the quality of friendships and that when it comes to friendship, quality is more important than quantity.

I believe technology has improved our ways of life greatly. I also believe that there are many people in this world that abuse technology and therefore turn it into something harmful. Those who use technology way too much and at inappropriate times can experience the downsides of technology. Just because we can chat online or on a cell phone, make friends online from different countries, and buy products online does not mean that we always should do that. It is usually better to interact with people face to face in a personal manner and have friends that you can see in person and interact with. It is also important to slow down every day and not let technology and this high speed life we live in be stressful. Technology can be very beneficial in helping build and create community between people when it is used in the right way.

Cell phones...help us or hurt us?

I feel cell phones both help us and hurt us in the world today. Cell phones are the best way to get in touch with people and stay connected. They are very helpful to us in cases when there is a car accident, you can dial 911 quickly, when you are lost you can call someone to give you directions without having to stop. Cell phones really are great for when you are on the move because you don't have to have a land line to get ahold of someone. Cell phones hurt us when people are texting and driving because they are usually more focused on their conversation and not on the road in front of them. Talking on your cell phone and driving can also be very dangerous but I feel it is much better to talk than to text. Even though when you are talking you maybe more concentrated on your conversation your eyes will still be on the road and what is going on around you and not on the phone while your typing out a text, but either way talking or texting on your cell phone is very dangerous while you are driving. So although cell phones are a great way to stay in touch with people at all times even when you are out and about they can be very dangerous because you aren't paying all of your attention to your driving anymore. There is an article on associatedcontent.com titled "How Talking on a Cell Phone Caused My Car Accident". In this article this lady tells us about the car accident she and her husband were in 2 years ago and how they are still in pain and have to rely on pain killers and muscle relaxers everyday in order to get through the day. She and her husband were sitting at a red light waiting for it to change when they were rear ended by a truck. The truck sent their car through 2 lanes of oncoming traffic. There were 2 men in the truck coming back from their landscaping job. The passenger was looking at their book and the driver was on the phone with their boss. The driver told the police officers that he "saw the green turn light and just assumed that the regular lane was green too". That's when he rear ended this woman and her husband. If he hadn't been on his cell phone he would have been paying enough attention to notice that the light was red and the car stopped wasn't moving. I feel like this article is a very good example of how talking on your cell phone can distract you enough to cause a big problem and possibly an accident that could cause someone pain that won't go away. I feel like belief and doubt function to help me see all the aspects of cell phones in the way that there are so many things that can be negative and positive about using cell phones that you can't really have one belief without one doubt that goes along with it. For example the belief of how great cell phones are for getting ahold of people while they are out and about comes with the doubt about how they can cause accidents when people are out and about because they talk on the phone while driving and aren't paying enough attention. In the case of cell phones I do feel that belief is always positive and doubt is always negative because I can't think of anything that I can say to prove it otherwise. Beliefs for me always show the good things about what I'm talking about and the doubt always shows how that belief can be flipped to be a bad thing.

The end of the world... or a new beginning?

Technology has slowly, but surely inched its' way into our world. Along time ago, the most recent form of technology was the paper and pencil. Obviously, technology has come along way. But just because technology has helped us in some ways does not necessarily mean it is a good thing. 

Technology enhances our community by allowing people to keep in touch, even though their days are busy and never-ending. Asking my mom on the subject, she told me that before computers were really used and before email, it as hard for her to keep in touch with her college friends and her friends from high school because of how busy her days were. She worked all day then cooked dinner for her family at night and then went to bed. Now, because of email, it is a fast and conveinent way to keep in touch with the people that are important to your life. You do not have to step outside to call them, you can do it while at work or at home while you are busy doing other things. Cell phones are great for our community too because they make great rescue devices. If someone was to get in a car accident, if capable, they could call 911 immedialtely. Those are the two main pieces of technology that are excellent for our community, but there is much more.

On the reverse side of things, there are several factors about technology that can threaten our community. Now that individuals have access to email, facebook, myspace, and all those types of websites, it can get pretty dangerous. A lot of people put a lot of their personal information on the internet and that can be a perfect tool for murderers and robbers. People are putting where they live, their cell phone number, and a lot more personal information on there. If they are not careful, the wrong person can get a hold of that information. Also, kids that have cell phones are not getting the proper amount of sleep when they constatnly text and get phone calls during the night. Before cell phones, land line phones were the only way of contacting someone you wanted to talk to. In order to do that, you take the chance of waking up everyone in the house. Now that cell phones exist, people do not have a problem calling or texting someone in the middle of the night because they know only the owner of that cell phone will hear it. People can also lose their personal communication skills by texting and typing all the time. Barely anything is face to face anymore, it is all through a screen. 

Having belief and doubt on a topic is a good thing because it helps not to be so biased on a topic. Belief in a topic is seeing the positive things in the particular subject and agreeing with whatever is being discussed or argued over. Doubt is not believing in the topic and trying to find ways to prove it wrong. Having an open mind with your topic by having some belief and doubt will help get you a realistic conclusion. Belief is not always positive because sometimes when people believe in the wrong thing, it can result in misinformation. Doubt is not always negative either because it is good to not believe in something that is not true. Sometimes people just always go with the flow and go along with what everyone else thinks and that is not good. Individuality is a good thing, and having doubt in something, even if you are wrong, can show people that you are questioning things because you care and you are interested in learning. For example: when my friends were talking about Obama and how he was going to be a horrible president, I almost just agreed with them because they were so confident, but then I really stopped to think about it. I had been keeping up with Obama and I thought he could make a decent president, so I said something. My friends were shocked that I said something that all of them agreed with, but in the end they respected me for doubting their confidence. 

Mobile Phones: Keeping People Connected?

My sister and I are on the phone talking and laughing about everybody we know, when suddenly she says, "Oh, my God, where is the toilet paper?"

It turns out she's at the grocery store, but when I think about what we've been talking and laughing about, I almost wish she really was sitting on the toilet. At least she doesn't have me on speaker phone. She doesn't have me on speaker phone, does she?

Mobile phones have certainly changed things, and not all for the better. In less than 20 years, they've gone from clunky suitcase phones to slim hand-held devices, from status markers to necessities of life. It used to be I could tell when someone was actually talking to me, and I used to know that people who were talking to no one in particular were best avoided. It used to be that I would sometimes wonder about the people I saw around me; now they tell me more than I ever wanted to know. It used to be that I'd see college kids walking in groups, enjoying each others' company; now I see them walking together, but they're all on cell phones, virtually somewhere else. It used to be that going away to college meant forming new attachments in a new place and becoming part of a new community; now the cell phone makes it too easy to avoid cutting the apron strings.

Cell phones also have created new etiquette issues and I'm not sure anyone knows what the new rules are, much less agrees on them. I can't help but feel slighted when a friend takes phone calls over lunch when we're supposed to be catching up on things. Multitasking is a myth, which is why I still can't drive and talk on the phone at the same time. It isn't always wonderful to be always so available: It can be inconvenient, rude, and even dangerous.

On the other hand, cell phones have made it easier and cheaper to stay connected with people when distance can't be helped. It used to be that going away to college meant losing touch with family and friends because long-distance calls were just too expensive, and there was no such thing as email or AIM. It used to be that getting separated from the group or getting stranded in the car was not only frustrating, but potentially dangerous. When we moved to a new town six years ago, my daughter didn't lose touch with her old friends as would have happened when I was a kid; she still talks and texts to them regularly--in addition to communicating with them via AIM and Facebook.

Doubting the value of cell phones and other technologies is actually a positive exercise because it makes me realize that most of what I complain about is the lack of etiquette and the annoying distractions--which are nothing new. There have always been rude people; there have always been distractions. This lack of etiquette and lack of attention to the people around us threatens community, not the cell phone itself. A lot of people believed in the cell phone, and that has led to innovations in communication that, quite honestly, I never imagined would be possible in my lifetime.

Doubting and Believing is the yin-yang of critical thinking it seems to me: Does Doubt remind us that even great ideas have drawbacks, while Belief sets us up to be cheated? Or does Doubt prevent us from dreaming and achieving, while Belief sustains us through what seem to be impossible challenges? When it comes to technology, too much or too little of either Doubt or Belief can be a dangerous thing--but where is that happy medium?