We have all fallen in to an abyss but we just haven’t realized it yet. The change that has taken place in our world in the last 10 years is greater than the previous 100 years. The changes that one generation is experiencing, took 6 or 7 generations to experience in the 1900’s.
Now picture this. A family of four comes in to a coffee shop, buys its lunch and sits down to eat. During their meal no one speaks. No one looks up. They jam fast food in to their mouths, while playing on handheld devices, sending messages, listening to I-tunes and surfing the Net.
They leave the restaurant and the kids have to be driven back to school. Dad fumbles with his cell phone while sipping his coffee. Mom checks her Facebook account and the kids in the backseat are texting to their friends. The kids get dropped off at school, and the parents go back to work. Hardly a word was spoken during the lunch hour. This pattern is repeated millions of times every day in different ways all around the world.
Our lives are being controlled, and are being driven by technology of all kinds. Computers were invented to assist us, not to take over our minds and teach us how to think.
You cannot put a child in a room with a computer and expect the child to learn to read. Sure the computer will be a great aid for learning if used responsibly, but as a society we are letting the technology control us.
To cite one example, consider Facebook. Intelligence authorities love it by the way because people are entering personal information about themselves all the time, and then they present it on a platter. Why use ‘information officers’ to collect information when people will provide all kinds of information about themselves for free?
Some people actually live their lives on Facebook. They use Facebook as a hub to start their day, and from there play an endless assortment of games, answer messages, post articles, chat, reply to moves, etc. It’s amazing what you can do. You can never have enough time on Facebook because you can always look for new ‘friends’ and there’s always new games to play or more photos to post.
However, there a few things that Facebook cannot do. It cannot replace face to face contact and interaction. It cannot replace people discussing ideas, problem solving, teambuilding and coming up with solutions, at a time in our history when fresh ideas and forward thinking are really needed.
One of the paradoxes of Internet use in general, is that while there is virtually an unlimited wealth of information and so many topics to explore, that focusing on a single subject becomes almost impossible. You can’t surf forever. Sooner or later you have to consolidate your thoughts or you keep drifting.
I’m not suggesting that there is a quick fix here. Viacom, Disney, Apple, Microsoft and all of the other big corporations control the content. We are being carefully groomed, ‘dumbed down’ and brainwashed and the majority of us don’t see a problem with that.
Remember the words of Marshal McLuhan: “The Medium is the Message.”
Society's values and ways of doing things are changing drastically because of the technology, but these changes should not be automatically endorsed.
They need to be critiqued and challenged in every way possible.
