Technology in Today\'s World a Recent Car

Technology in Today's World

A recent car commercial featured a twenty-something woman who expressed pity that her parents had only nineteen Facebook friends, while she herself had several hundred. The humor in the commercial lies in its irony. The young woman is in a room alone with her computer and some stuffed animals on the shelves behind her while her parents, not lonely at all, are shown biking with their peers. The commercial certainly evokes a smile, but it also makes a serious point about technology in the twenty-first century. For many people, particularly those of the younger generation, there is the illusion of connectedness with the ready availability of portable devices from smart phones to ultra-thin laptops to tablet computers. Facebook friends, Twitter followers, and those to whom we are "linked in" may not be people we know well at all. These social media sites, and others, can create in some people a false sense of intimacy where none really exists. Technology has led us to the point where we're sharing thoughts and feelings instantaneously "at the expense of cultivating the ability to be alone and to manage and contain one's emotions" (Turkle 2007).

We live in "techno-enthusiastic times" (Turkle 2007). People love their gadgets and feel lost if they have to go without a wi-fi connection. With the acquisition of gadgets has come the decline of social skills: people abandon friends in the middle of a face-to-face conversation to answer a cell phone call or respond to an email alert. It is not unusual to go to a restaurant and see a family waiting for their meal, each person engaged with a different device rather than with each other. In 2007, Sherry Turkle wrote "High school and college students give up their privacy on MySpace about everything from musical preferences to sexual hang-ups." Though MySpace has yielded to Facebook and Twitter in the social media stakes, the net outcome is the same as it was five years ago. Young people are sharing a considerable amount of personal information and do not seem to be the least bit troubled by it.

Many Americans middle-aged and older fear that attachment to technology is ruining the younger generation. They see today's youth as less capable, less motivated, and woefully unlearned in history and literature. In her acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize in literature, Doris Lessing, then eighty-eight years old, condemned the Internet, claiming it has "seduced a whole generation into its inanities" (Goldwasser 2008). Zadie Smith, a Harvard contemporary of billionaire entrepreneur Mark Zuckerberg, calls this the "Facebook Generation" (2010), obsessed with celebrity culture and a sense of being intimately involved in the lives of a great number of people.

In his book Hamlet's Blackberry: A Practical Philosophy for Building a Good Life in the Digital Age, author William Powers muses on what people have lost as they have made technological gains. Powers is philosophical, asking the question of just how connected should we be. One of the points he makes is that even when we recognize we are too technology-dependent, we find it difficult to disconnect and, say, go read a book. "We spend hours keeping up with our e-mails…we are learning to see ourselves as cyborgs, at one with our devices" (Turkle 2007).

Many people appreciate the speed and convenience of conducting business online. Black Friday, the traditional start of the Christmas shopping season on the day after Thanksgiving, has spawned Cyber Monday, a day on which online retailers try to entice customers with bargains and special offers. The 2011 Census, reporting on the most current available data (2007 and 2008), shows that Americans spent over $222 billion shopping online. It is likely that the figures for subsequent years, when they become available, will show an increase in this figure, even taking into consideration the economic downturn of 2009 and 2010.

Online banking, like online shopping, is growing in popularity, enabling people to manage their finances from home computers. No longer do Americans need to balance a checkbook. They can pay bills electronically and monitor their accounts as often as they like. When Americans leave home, ATM and EBT cards provide easy access to cash anytime and from almost anywhere.

Access to education has evolved as an increasing number of colleges and universities offer online courses. In some fields, such as library science and business administration, it is possible to get an advanced degree entirely online. There are online programs for younger students as well. Families who home school or who live in isolated areas can take advantage of accredited programs that offer students opportunities that may not be available or accessible locally. Beyond academics, there are many options for people who want to gain new knowledge for professional development or personal satisfaction.

Communication has changed with the latest advances in technology. Friends may not be able to meet in person, but they can stay connected with their cell phones using talk, text and video. People can find out what their friends are doing and share the latest news with social media sites such as Facebook and MySpace. Twitter enables users to share and read short (140-character) updates sent by phone. Phones can be used in a number of different ways: check email, browse the web, navigate with a GPS, maintain a datebook, and other functions of the user's choice.