Technology Controls Our Lives
From the printing press to computers, technology continues to evolve and has affected
society and its surroundings in a number of ways. Technology has become a tool that can
provide significant change and provide convenience for its users but it can tend to rule our
daily lives in different ways. This paper will explain how Technology in society has
become something that has begun to control humanity and daily lives. Technology has
become a security and privacy issue; many people are being watched and have situated
themselves with celebrities. Technology has been a number one priority in usage, everyone
from youth to seniors using technology. Finally technology has become an obsession; the
consumer has put technology on a pedestal, as if it is material objects being worshiped.
Technology has become something that is not just merely used, but has been assigned
human values to it such as material being loved and adored.
In an age when thinking, writing, reading, and gossip increasingly takes place online, and
when all kinds of personal information is widely recorded and permanently retrievable in
cyberspace, civilians run the risk of being treated like celebrities in the worst sense (Rosen,
2000, p. 34). When a fight breaks out in a public space people are seen using cameras from
their Iphones or Smartphone device and posting the videos online. Someone may post
photos of their home, making it easy for someone else to find their location, and if
someone teaches at a state university, their salary too may be available. In a world where
people are bombarded with information, they form impressions quickly, based on sound
bites, and those impressions are likely to misrepresent our complicated and often
contradictory characters (Rosen, 2000, p. 37). Privacy protects us from being judged out of
context in a world of short attention spans. Genuine knowledge of another person is the
culmination of a slow process of mutual shock (Rosen, 2000, p. 38). It requires the gradual
setting aside of social masks and the rise of building trust. However today’s society is
more about exposure then keeping certain things hidden or least trying to. It seems like
everyone these days is making a YouTube video or posting pictures or stating where they
are on Facebook and other social websites such as Twitter and MySpace.
Technology has become useful in many ways, if it is not used in one way, there will always
be an alternative to another way. Journalist Clive Thompson observed, “This generation
