After finishing Amusing Ourselves to Death, the first thing I thought was that society today is still in the "Age of Show Business". Many people rely on technology even more so today than ever before. Everywhere I go, I see people on their phones, taking selfies, posting on social media, and ignoring the people around them. And when students have a question, they won't ask their teacher, they'll just Google the answer because it's more convenient than having an actual conversation with someone who may know a lot on the subject.
At the same time though, it's unrealistic to challenge society to use less of their technology. People are going to use it no matter what others think or say about it and there's nothing to be done. We as a whole need to realize that technology isn't everything. In fact, it makes us more antisocial in most cases. A group of friends will watch t.v. instead of talk to each other. Social media forces us to ignore the people around us. And even music from phones and ipods causes us to not be able to pay attention to people who are trying to talk to us. But that is the way of our culture today.
I agree with you, from the subject at hand, in which technology does deteriorate social strengths we should all have. Sure technology is very convenient, but we must also learn to actually meet people face to face and make conversation. This is so that we can still have some type of humane attributes within ourselves.
ReplyDeleteTechnology has been completely integrated into a majority of our lives. This can't be helped because it does make parts of our lives easier. In some cases, it's become necessary to use technology to aid us. However, that shouldn't be the reason people become antisocial and focus on technology rather than other people. Technology should be an extension of our lives, rather than it being the core focus.
ReplyDeleteI agree that technology is taking over our culture in many negative ways. I don't think having something as accessible as a phone will ever stop being fascinating to us so we overuse them. They make us antisocial and shy in class because it's better to google something later than risk sounding dumb in front of people. So many of us are afraid of what people think and technology is a good distraction for us sometimes. However, technology shouldn't only be viewed as being negative. It only is because, like you were saying, we don't actually use it when necessary.
ReplyDeleteI agree that technology definitely has upsides. Some social media makes it easy to keep in touch with geographically distant friends and family. It can still help with education. I've noticed, specifically with Amusing Ourselves to Death's extensive argument against technology, that people are using computers and smartphones to post on an online blog about the shortcomings of technology. Of course, Postman is correct in many of his arguments, and it's important to discuss them and other topics, but I was just noticing something of an imbalance.
DeleteYes there are great things about technology, but the problem is that people in our generation are completely hooked on it. It's okay to be on your phone and to keep in touch with family. But it's not just that, it's checking your post every five seconds. Texting someone else when there are friends and family around you. People are too attached to it when there's so many things that they're missing because their eyes are stuck on a screen.
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DeleteCouldn't have said it better myself, Sarah. I completely agree. Today, our society is so dependent on technology. It's scary at times but there really is nothing we can do to stop it. It vastly improves our lives yet it can be sketchy at times. Instead of depending on the internet for answers, our generation should be looking for answers in more reliable places such as teachers or books. Unfortunately, because people have become solely dependent on technology, they do not make the effort to find other sources without being forced to do so.
ReplyDeleteIt's true that social media and other new things like that are causing people to forget about actual interaction with people around them and getting them to focus more on virtual interactions with people they don't even know. Although this is a bad thing, there is some good that can come out of it, for example, there are kids who go to friends houses to play videogames, a new technology, and altough they aren't actually looking at each other most of the time they are still talking and bonding while playing a game with each other.
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