07-11-2008, 07:43 PM
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#1 (permalink) |
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Trying to make mom and pop proud
Join Date: Jul 2008
Posts: 20
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Please read & review: technology and loneliness
Folks, I'm sitting for exam on 7/15, so if you get to rate this, thank you, and please be gentle! I'm mostly looking for moral support at this point in the game!
 Topic: Both the development of technological tools and the uses to which humanity has put them have created modern civilizations in which loneliness is ever increasing. Modern advancements and the way in which humanity uses them have catalyzed revolutions in both local and global communications. In many ways, these revolutions have inspired a new kind of connectedness never before enjoyed. Conversely, however, this inchoate interconnectedness paradoxically but ineluctably imbues humanity with a new kind of loneliness. For an example of how society has become more connected, consider the social fabric of the societies of yore. Prehistoric tribal communities were almost completely cut off from rest of the world. With the advent of civilization, tribes could interact, but were still separated by seemingly insurmountable journeys. Imagine traveling across the ocean for several months in order to visit with extended family in "The New World". Likewise, the delay for posting a letter via the Pony Express is nearly unthinkable by today's email standards. Even a cross-country journey to confer with a client without the use of air transportation is difficult to envision. Contemporary global communications have made yesterday's unconquerable world seem exiguous by comparison. Today's family can load up the Winnebago and visit with country cousins for day trip, but such a visit would have taken weeks for a Victorian family. While visiting, whether it be hiking in the forest or boating in the ocean, the family is never out-of-touch with friends and relatives around the planet with the use of satellite communications and cell phones. When back at home, the family uses the internet to email friends and share ideas with like-minded colleagues without ever having met face-to-face. However, this scenario propounds a new problem for consideration: a nascent brand of loneliness. In days of yore, the clan broke bread and conversed about daily chores. Today, the same family eats TV dinners, accepting the media's view of quotidian activities. The dinner itself, rather than being cooked as a collective effort by the family, may have been procured at a drive-in window, the customer still behind the wheel of a car, not even deigning to go inside the restaurant to interact with the clientele. As much as the global community is becoming connected, the local community is becoming disconnected. Hence, an analysis of contemporary society evinces that the consequence of modern advancement is a new breed of isolation. Without such tools as mass transportation, and the internet, mankind lived in a dark lonely world, cut off from other tribes and cultures. With these tools, individuals can now communicate with colleagues around the globe, at the expense of consorting with one's own neighbors. This is just one of many inevitable paradoxes confronting the scientist as he weighs the good against bad in the pursuit of new technologies. |
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