What is the point of technology? Why do we treat it like it like it's amazing, but sometimes undervalue its existence on a daily basis. Is it a godsend, or a curse? Does it make us smarter and more analytical, or dumb as rocks, reliant on our tech and the internet like a life support system?
These are the questions that have arisen over the past decades as technology has slowly engulfed our entire lives. It first started with the calculators that engulfed entire rooms. Costing millions upon millions of dollars, and taking up entire rooms, they were slower than potatoes at calculating answers. Sure, it came in handy when crunching huge numbers, but otherwise, you could beat this machine out multiplying 324*293 anyday! It was at this point that some saw technology take two divergent paths: either a wasteland of circuitry, or a vast land of potential.
Now, prior to this point in time, the television had came along to replace the radio, and was also met with criticism: it was deemed by some to be a melting pot for the brain, offering little more than a time waster to the human life, but others realized the leisureful activies the television could bring. However, with TV/Netflix times peaking to an average of hours per week for teenagers, it seems that some of the grumpy grandpas of the past may have been right on that one….But it keeps coming back to whether or not a technology is making us smarter or burning our brains out like Rambough burning his brains out in Paris over a thousand poems. I guess the internet, smartphones, and smartwatches are the latest arrivals to the game, so we should give them their shots to duke it out in the ring to figure this one out. Lets start with the internet.
The internet allows us to have access to a wealth of information, We can Google when someone died, what someone did, who to vote for, when the next solar eclipse is, and read blog articles on the web to learn about the positives and negatives of technology. Seems legit, so lets give one point to Gryffindor…..but wait. Hold on there jockey, a little fast on the starter gun. While we can look up and find information, it also opens a world to billions and billions of hours of useless YouTube videos completely non educational, social media sites such as reddit to just layer comment upon comment on a photo of Justin Bieber being made fun of, an ever-abundance of nudity, online bullying, and enough selfies to wrap a canvas of them around the earth several hundred times. However, despite all of this, I would say it has united the world in a whole new way, and the idea of having information at our fingertips, while making us less likely to memorize who was the first president of the United States, gives us more power than ever at our fingertips.
Smartphones tie into this realm of forever being connected. While they provide the fastest portal to information via the internet, they also provide the fatest portal to distractions: Snapchat selfies, Twitter surfing, and...well, never mind, no one uses Facebook but old people. Smartphones, while being “smart”, I think they have pushed social media over its edge with looping 7 second videos of kittens, and therefore, I think smartphones, while a tool for me every day, have been devices that have made us just a tad more….non smart. as if the “smart” in smartphone has taken the word from us. It's a fair fight, with evidence on both sides, but it ultimately takes the distraction award for me.
Finally, the brand new smartwatches step into the ring. Smartwatches are different, because they are either seen as overpriced, a gimmick, or a fad of the dying watch, due to phones with time being everywhere. However, since 2011, they have started working their way into peoples’ lives, and for the reason that they not only tell the time, but offer better map directions, sport tracking, and call/text/app notifications right on my wrist. While most activities will alert me with a notification, still requiring me to pull my phone out, many activities can be responded to with voice, or even better, I can just swipe them away, without pulling my phone out. So while this is just a digital accessory to my phone, I believe its most valuable function is to pull me away from my phone. No longer will I have to check my phone for phantom vibrates that I wasn’t sure about, or I can save time by swiping away useless texts in class without pulling my phone out. Its a time saver, and I believe this one gives a point to using technology smarter instead of becoming addicted to it, even though the idea behind it sounds like the opposite. Using a crippled piece of technology to get basic tasks done pulls us away from the temping world that is our smartphone on the internet.
So I guess the conclusion is, it kinda depends. Technology can make us smarter and grow with information, but it can also pull us into its depths that cause distraction and disconnection. Its up to its users to steer the car towards the direction they wish to take.
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