A bit of a rant about how technology is ruining the human race...thoughts??
Over the past twenty years, technology has changed the way people live their lives. Since 1990, cell phone use and Internet use have increased significantly and Internet/text communication gained popularity. Email and instant messaging became key forms of communication and cell phones began replacing landlines. Genetic engineering began making progress and ideas of eliminating certain, if not all, diseases and possibly even death became possibilities. Now, in 2010, we sit on the brink of possibility. Technology can either continue progressing in a positive manner or it can crash and burn and cause the potential downfall of the human race. But has technology already begun to lead to our downfall? In a world of Google, Facebook and reality television, who is to say that we aren’t already descending into failure as a species? The Internet eliminates the necessity to think and genetic engineering has the possibility to eliminate the necessity to develop an immune response and eventually eliminate death. Through the Internet, people no longer have to live the lives they have but can role play and become anyone they fancy themselves. This addiction to progress will, at first, benefit us as a species, but will inevitably lead to our downfall.
While I enjoy these technological advances, I do not feel that they are benefiting us the way they used to. In the beginning, the ability to communicate with anyone anywhere via cell phone was a fantastic development. It still is. But they way cell phone users communicate now via text messaging is ruining the way humans interact. One can develop a relationship with another person without ever speaking to them. The same is true for the Internet. Social networking websites provide a degree of anonymity and an ability to deceive entire groups of “friends” into believing anything written in an ‘about me’ section. These advances are slowly but surely crippling us.
Facebook is one of the biggest examples of how technology fools people into thinking that they are enhancing their friendships when actually their use of the site is standing in the way of them. People can just leave a vague wall post or 'poke' somebody and it makes them feel like they're staying in touch with people, when in reality, they are being lazy and impersonal and in many ways, weakening whatever relationship they used to have with that person. Inviting someone to play Farmville doesn't count as keeping in touch and it certainly doesn’t constitute friendship. Instead of ten people having ten friends, and all getting in touch with each other to find out what's going on, they all just get in touch with one know-it-all guy (Facebook) who tells them what everybody's up to, thus cutting out the need for actual interaction. The same is true of Twitter. But Twitter also provides people with a false sense of significance. This is not to say that people aren’t significant, but if I’ve just watched an episode of a television series, why must I tell a number of people who follow me about it? Am I to believe that each person who follows me genuinely cares about every silly and insignificant 140 character thought that goes through my head? I wouldn’t care, why should they? The Internet is a distraction from real life, but it is becoming a substitute for it.
My ability to retain information is diminished by my dependence on my iPhone and my certainty that I will be able to access any information that I need by having a touch screen version of the Internet in my pocket. The music industry is dying because illegal music sharing technology has advanced to the point that it is technically only necessary for one person to purchase music. My ability to devour literature has been replaced by a desire to distract myself from life by watching a movie or wasting my time on YouTube. Technology has ruined my life. I’ve developed a dependence on drugs to help me sleep, relax, be happy, stimulate interest, or numb myself. As a result, I have forgotten how to feel. I resort to self mutilation to remind myself that I am still a person as opposed to an emotionless blend of aspects of characters from movies and television series that I found favorable and the bits of information I choose to tell people on social networking websites. My imagination ceases to exist because any image I intend to visualize can be found through Google images. The words that come out of my mouth are not mine, but lines from movies that I recall that have stimulated some sort of emotional reaction. Allen Ginsberg saw the best minds of his generation destroyed by madness, I’ve seen the best minds of my generation wasted on reality television, Facebook and Twitter.
Simon Young said that "the deliberate furtherance of human evolution through advanced biotechnology is not only possible, but inevitable…” (Young 22) While I agree with this statement, I cannot agree with his conclusion that this progress is actually a good thing. Progress in the field of genetic engineering is inevitable. It's a possibility and progression is happening right now. But like with other technologies, it will go too far. Elimination of diseases will become elimination of death and reduction of birth defects will become unnecessary alteration of physical features. Death is inevitable, and that is what makes life meaningful. The elimination of death would upset everything. Religions would have to be altered because death is most often seen as the path to the return to said religion’s respective deity. Overpopulation, already a problem, would become a crisis, and if ideas like the death penalty survive, death could either become the harshest punishment of all or a blessing in disguise. Who will decide who deserves to die and who deserves to spend eternity confined to contemplate the consequences of their actions? And which is worse? People tend to live longer when they have a job to do and as a result, people work harder at what they do to get as much done before the looming certainty of death becomes the only thing left on their ‘to do’ list. Elimination of death would give people all the time in the world to waste on the Internet or watching reality television. I myself am guilty of this. I have spent hours on YouTube, watching others rehash the details of their lives, no more interesting than mine, only to gain nothing but time wasted. Granted, death is unfortunate. I watched my grandfather go from a lively man, eager to play cards with his granddaughter to a coma patient, depending on machines, barely able to move his right thumb, to a lifeless stranger in a hospital bed within a week all because of a cerebral hemorrhage. The elimination of this malady would have given my grandfather at least another five years to live. The effects of his death drove my grandmother over the edge into senility. And as terrible as it is to watch the deterioration of loved ones and to realize that they will no longer be around, a time limit is necessary. We cherish our time with our loved ones because there is no certainty as to how long they will be around. If we had forever, we would write them off and eventually become entirely selfish beings, depending on others only when we need something from them. We would inevitably get bored or annoyed with the company we once enjoyed.
Human beings are only a brief moment in the grand scheme of the universe. Our species needs to go extinct for the world to resume its natural state of normalcy. Granted, we’ve lasted quite a while, but the universe got along fine without us before our existence, and one can assume that it will resume where it left off once we die out. In reality, we are causing more problems than we are creating solutions. We’ve polluted this Earth that has been so good to us and caused global warming. The natural beauty of icebergs and the natural habitat of the wildlife that surround them has been diminished and in many cases entirely destroyed by the wasteful psychology that has become human nature. Manipulation is engrained in our psyches, giving us ideas of how to effectively get what we want with as little effort as possible. The Internet contributes to this as well. The masks we can wear in online communities, the access to seemingly unlimited information through Google and other search engines, the ability to lie seamlessly through text communication. Google is perhaps one of the worst culprits. It gives us unlimited access to information but no knowledge. If the progress in technology and genetic engineering continues, we may find ourselves living in a world much like that created by M. T. Anderson in his teen novel Feed where humans have microchips in their heads giving them access to all of the information of the Internet. The necessity for schools will be eliminated because purely by thinking of something, we will be berated with information, both pertinent and not. The idea of knowledge as we know it will cease to exist. This is a time when progress is not only possible but inevitable, and that is our downfall. This addiction to progress, engrained into our brains, will lead to the deterioration of the human race. Too many technological advances may be nature’s way of ridding the universe of humankind, at least temporarily. Somewhere along this road to what seems to be a utopia, the selfish greed and manipulation that humans are now born with will kick in and we will take progress to a point of no return and eventually go extinct. This day may very well be the best day in the history of the universe thus far. We have caused far more problems than we have solutions for and our selfish laziness will be our downfall.
Progress can be seen as the gateway to possibility, opening doors to new unknowns and providing improved life for those who accept it. But progress also leads to downfalls. It does every time. Every revolution starts with good intentions and most end up worse than before. Even Hitler started out with good intentions. He did wonders for Germany’s economy, but inevitably, one wrong turn after another lead to the Holocaust. Technological advances at this point in humanity will become our generation’s Holocaust. Those who cannot afford genetic engineering will all but be sentenced to death, thus weeding out the poor and leaving the middle class to take over the role of the impoverished. By using Google, Facebook and other social networking websites, we are degrading what it means to be a human being, to show others raw emotion, to value the honesty that trust can earn. In a world of Internet addictions and reality television and social networking, human beings are showing facades of themselves and living vicariously through loosely scripted alternative realities of their lives. Elimination of death through genetic engineering will no doubt turn this boredom into a perpetual state and further the downfall of humanity. Progress is good and progress is inevitable, but moderation is key to a successful life. Why can’t we take progress in moderation as well?
