“Machines, once made, make men”, as quoted from Ralph Waldo Emerson in the middle of the 19th century.
Dana 2015
As a result of the massive amount of evidence for technology advances accumulated over the last two centuries, we can safely conclude that a lot changes have occurred and continues to occur. It is evident that technology has the potential to harm or enhance your social skills and social life, yes, there are two sides of it.
Without a doubt, technology has improved our world’s ease of life. Those who can reflect back within the era without technology, will know how much easier technology has made life. For starters, have you ever thinking to give up your Internet or your cell phone? People keep arguing whether “easier” means “better” too. However, let’s brought the topic to different focus, it what you focusing is “if the world has been made easier with technology” then yes. Now if you see people on the streets, it’s not hard to find someone who’s busy with their phones. People prefer to look down at their screen and not to be sociable with other people. Of course, social technology has made it easier for you to contact your overseas family or friends by using video call or chat messages. Does technology increase or decrease your concern for others, your compassion for others, and your desire to serve them? Such are the critical questions regarding technology and social development. This technological detachment is becoming today’s reality.
As time goes by, Internet and mobile technology has subtly destroying the interaction’s quality that we have with others, disconnecting us from the world surround us. We tend to spend our time in front of our mobile phone and social medias to catch up instead of spending time with them face to face. Proven by studies, face to face interaction provides us more important sense of well-being. Same thing that happened to Albertsons, an American grocery company founded and based in Idaho, they eliminated the self-checkout lanes to encourage human interaction more. They will replace it with the standard or express lanes, a spokeswomen said.
“We just want the opportunity to talk to customers more,” Albertsons spokeswoman Christine Wilcox said. “That’s the driving motivation.”
Wikipedia 2008
When we lack of human contact, we will lose the intangibly real and valuable values about talking with someone face to face. We all social creature, we love talking and interacting with each other! There is no doubt whether you are a social person or not, we need each other, we can’t live alone in this world. Those beautiful relationships are mostly could only be achieved by face-to-face interaction and nothing can change that, so it is not just someone whose texts and voice call makes your cellphone’s inbox full or in your iPad or computer screen. It just feels sad and ironic when you think back about why men created technologies and keep making advances for the past two centuries. It was meant to make our life easier and better but then we kept losing values that we think are important in our life. It is back to ourselves again, think how you use your technology to assist your daily life. If we think about it, there are always two sides of things in our life. Technology too, has its own bad and good consequences. The problem is you won’t realize it right away but after a long usage you will definitely starting to see the damage. Instead of blindly accepting technology, we do need to have critical thinking first and be aware of the damage. Don’t let the technology make our lives lost their values such as religious values, moral values, cultural values and human values.
By: Jessica Avelina Horo
References:
Anand, A. 2011, Major Groceries Getting Rid of Self-Checkout Lanes, NBC News, viewed on 24 August 2015, <http://www.nbcnews.com/id/43687085/ns/business-retail/t/major-grocer-getting-rid-self-checkout-lanes/#.Vd8Kq1xjDiY>
Dupuy J.P., Do We Shape Technologies, or Do They Shape Us?, viewed 24 August 2015, <ftp://ftp.cordis.europa.eu/pub/foresight/docs/ntw_22_dupuy_text.pdf>
Human Kinetics – n.d, Technology can have positive and negative impact on social interactions, viewed 24 August 2015, <http://www.humankinetics.com/excerpts/excerpts/technology-can-have-positive-and-negative-impact-on-social-interactions>
Image References
Dana 2015, My love/hate relationship with my phone, The Rebel Chronicles, viewed on 24 August 2015, <http://therebelchronicles.com/my-lovehate-relationship-with-my-phone/>
Wikipedia 2008, NCR Self-service checkouts & fastlane at a Sainsbury’s store, viewed on 24 August 2015, <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-checkout>
Student Admin 2012, Technology is Destroying the Quality of Human Interaction, The Bottom Line, viewed on 24 August 2015, <https://thebottomline.as.ucsb.edu/2012/01/technology-is-destroying-the-quality-of-human-interaction>
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