While we might not have the massed produced flying car in 2009, of which I still am bummed about, we do have phones that can tell us where the cheapest gas is, where the nearest Starbucks is and Tweet until our thumbs fall off. Does all of this technology at our finger tips and constant connectivity make us better and more productive people or is constant connectivity just building our egos and pulling us in too many directions?
Case and point, I visited a Friendly's with my family after a visit to the Philadelphia Zoo over the summer. As my wife and I played table goalie, attempting to make sure our son didn't break anything or eat anything that he wasn't supposed to, we noticed a family sitting near by. A mother took her tween son and daughter our for a nice weekday lunch. Was this family engaged in conversation? Possibly, but not with one another. You see the son was on his PSP while the daughter was texting on her phone. I might dismiss this as just a display of poor table manners, but such a feat was repeated in the past month as my family ate dinner a our local Carrabba's. As we enjoyed our dinner a near by family seemed to enjoy the company of their iphones and PSPs more than each other. Are these displays of where we are heading as as society?
I often tell me students that we live in the second great era of technological advancement. The first era consisted of the first and second industrial revolutions. Industry was embraced during that era, often with little or no knowledge of the repercussion of such technological advancement. Yes industrialization has its many positives, but one cannot overlook its negatives as well. After all did anyone ever hear any early industrialist warn about the negative effects of industrialization on the environment or of the possible volatile swings in the capitalist market system?
Our current age of technological innovation is one that has never happened in recorded history. Never before has technology advanced at such a rapid pace. I am one of the first to say that technology has its many advantages and has made countless lives better in immeasurable ways. However, what are the negatives of the exponential growth of technology? Are we better people, better individuals, and a better world because of it? Or is technology overtaking simple every day tasks of our lives, such as sitting down to a meal with the people we care about the most? Where are we headed during this second great age of technological advancement? I suppose that only time will tell.
