There are few people that don’t interact with technology on any given day. It seems that many of us are turning over our lives and many of our worries to technological advances – some for better, but others for worse. But when we use technology as a way to lessen our overall workload and subsequent stress, the fast pace of technology doesn’t seem like that bad of a process. Many of us are using technology as a way to organize our lives and stay in contact with other people. We have personal digital assistants, portable computers, digital music players, and televisions. All of these allow us to interact with others or learn more information than we had in the past. We are a more informed society because of technology, but there are disadvantages to these advances. When you look at the Internet as one of the newer forms of technology, you begin to see that while everyone has access to information, it also means that anyone has access to this information. Anyone can write anything and place it on the Internet for someone else to read and use to add to their knowledge. But not all of the information is truthful, nor is it objective in nature. However, when you consider how fast we need to gather information at times, it almost seems like it doesn’t matter whether information is accurate – just that we can attain it. Another consideration of the faster pace of technology is its strain on our wallets and egos. New pieces of technology are always more expensive until we learn newer and cheaper ways to produce them. Or when people start to buy more of them, we produce more, lowering their price. But since every piece of technology can be improved, the process never seems to end. Tangled in with these advances is the ego driven need to have the newest and best things in our possession, lest our neighbors or coworkers ‘beat us’ to them. We always want the best of everything, but we can end up paying more for something that will only be improved again in a few months. Where does that leave the fast pace of technology? On one hand, we are constantly learning about the way that our world works and how we can manipulate technology to help us in this world. But on the other hand, we might be starting to look so closely at what we could do, and less at what we can already do. |
