Looking back 50 years ago, the average lifestyle of the typical American was completely different.
To second this, in only a change of two generations, the life of our parents would be more homogenous to our grandparents than to us — the millennials and the Gen Z.
The way we interact and see our culture is questionable, leaving us with a question: will technology change us, will it make it worse, or better?
Emily Pearce | Argonaut
Melissa Nilles, a writer for Her College News wrote about how technology affects our social interactions. She explained how our daily interactions have become a “nightmare” because of technology.
Nilles says that we spend more time worrying about how many Facebook friends and unread text messages we have than what is going on in the real world.
Nilles also goes on to describe the communication nightmare that technology makes. A psychologist quoted from her article, Robin Dunbar, goes on to state that humans can only maintain around 150 relationships or connections. We can only truly maintain around 100 to 200 relationships, making internet friends difficult to keep track of.
Nilles also talks about how technology has opened a door to communication we could never have before. Connections from different nations like Japan or Australia would not have been achieved without the help of technology.
David Murray, a professor of theology wrote an article titled “Digital Technology is Killing our Productivity.” Murray says that digital technology is not killing our productivity, it is killing our time.
We spend more time on our phones than doing other things that are more productive. It is not technology that is killing our productivity, but it is how we distract ourselves and manage our time. The introduction of technology has made it difficult to decide on how to spend our time and manage it. Technology leads to less time being productive and more time wasted on meaningless entertainment.
Yes, technology may be changing our culture and how we interact with others. Even though technology is bad for our communication and daily interactions, advances in technology can help our daily lives, as well.
The easiest way to fix our communication dilemma would be to engage in face-to-face interaction.
It is impossible to go an entire lifetime without human interaction.
For all we know, technology may be changing our culture for the better, and we may just be overstressing the future’s inevitable.
Emily Pearce can be reached at [email protected]
Gary M Eden
Labor , as was done by humans in the past , is steadily replacing human effort with technology. AI will eventually be able to do and replace virtually any and every task that humans depended on for income and sustenance. Murphy's law will come to total fruition , if it can happen , it will. Hollywood , in it's imaginative creations of a dystopian future , has shown time and again how existence for the human race will invariably progress. And it's not a pretty picture.
John
Absolute bollocks. Technology is killing us. It’s our enemy. Great in some ways but killing us as humans. The profit led corporate world are doing their best to minimize effects, but in 20 years time when there is mass unemployment and zero creativity thanKs to cost effect machines and people who can only interact on their phones, the only losers are humans
Vatsal Narang
Hi John, I totally agree with you..could you please elaborate on the point 'the profit led corporate world are doing their best to minimize effects' ...actually I have a debate where I've to speak how technology is killing us so was looking for some strong points and I came across your reply..