Technology and Our Generation

First off, let me state the obvious. This assignment is being conducted over the internet, and must be submitted tonight by midnight.

That means 20 years ago a kid would not have to be inside typing up a blog post, slaving over a computer, while his friends run off and leave him home alone, while they go to someone else's house, perfectly able to enjoy their holiday weekend.

Not to sound bitter or anything.

Actually, my aditude towards technology's impact on me is nto quite so simple, or completely negative. Rather, due to technology's pervasiveness into every facet of life demands a much more thorough analysis than simply, technology is bad, or technology is good. Rather, I would say it is a little of both. It has profoundly changed the way my generation lives. Making our relationships with others, not neccesarily better, or worse, but distinctly 21st Century.

Today, one can end a relationship in 160 characters, or less. Such instant power makes people make rash decisions. In one single text message, a human being can make another human being unconditionally hate them for all of eternity. I am speaking from experience. Compare this to the relationships of our parents, or grandparents even. These people would hand-write letters to one another, using more characters in the address line, than we do today in an average text message. Thumbs move faster and more thoughtlessly than pens. A text can be sent in less time than one can evaluate a decision. If I had to guess, this makes people today more likely to say things they shouldnt't. The speed at which one can make a decision, is directly proportional to the amount of empathy one can have for another. For example, the Liucitania, an old cruise ship sunk in a matter of minutes. This meant that grown men would board the life-boats hardly thinking about all the women and kids that would die. As compared to the iconic of the sinking of the Titanic, which took hours and hours. Those life-boats were devoid of any men- poor Leo. This fact, I would be willing to wager, relates to the increase in cyberbullying and teen suicide we see today. Ultimately, the speed and impersonality of our relationships inherently makes us more likely to act in a way we would generally consider less moral.

Let me just say I feel an awful lot like those guys on the life-boats of the Liucitania.

However, technology often makes us more moral. When it comes to how we act in person, face to face, "cara a cara," we must act under the palpable assumption that anything we say or do can, and will, be used against us in the court of Facebook. Facebook makes us think twice before we put our arm around a girl for a picture- because we know our girlfriend will see it (and let me say when she sees it, she will be frightfully livid, but rightfully so). We know that if we say something to a friend on Facebook, and their parents see it, that those parents will tell our parents, and our parents will ground us for two months (I am not speaking form experience here, I haven't been grounded since 5th grade). So technology makes us evaluate our decisions on a plain void of privacy. Everyone can see us. On occasion. this makes us behave morally.

In conclusion, technology forges relationships between people that move as fast as the electricity that powers them. In a sense, these relationships are circuits that bind us together, with a common wire of the death of anonymity. We are connected, all day. We can hide nothing. Whether that is good or bad, I don't know. Half the time, technology keeps us from doing dumb stuff. The other half the time, it makes us do it. We can say whatever we want, as soon as we want, without thining about if it is what we mean to say. As if that wasn't bad enough, we can't even control who sees it.  I just advise that you keep an eye out for technology. It moves fast. For technology is here to stay, and if one doesn't stay attentive, one could end up a victim of it.

Have a good holiday weekend.