Yesterday, in the midst of the somewhat hectic snowfall that went on for what seemed like days, I was catching up on the shows I had missed this past week. My show was almost over when the TV shut off along with the lights throughout the house. The power had gone out. The wifi was incompetent. And chaos ensued in my home. I groaned and began to complain about missing the last part of my show, my mom couldn't see anything and was bothered my the clocks reseting, and I could hear my brother upstairs protesting about the wifi turning off in the midst of his internet surfing. He even came downstairs later and claimed there was absolutely nothing to do without the power.
Taking a step back and analyzing the situation, I realized that society has become very dependent on these things that power gives us, particularly internet and television. I wondered what would happen if the power went out worldwide for a day, and how people would respond to that. What would people do without power? And more importantly, do we really need it?
I think that technology gives us an easy way to distract ourselves from what's important. We are not truly living in the moment when we are attached to our cell phone or always checking emails. I find it sad that people rely on Facebook and Twitter so much, when they could be outside enjoying nature or reading, or even just hanging with friends and enjoying each others company. And I'm not saying that I don't use technology to its full extent either, because I do always feel the need to be checking my Facebook notifications or replying to an email. But seeing what happened when my family didn't have the option to use technology, the way we were almost helpless to find other ways to fill our time, made me truly understand how technology-obsessed our society is.
I read this article today about our dependence on technology and the pros and cons of what technology provides us. In the article, it brings up a professor of Communication Studies at West Virginia University named Nicholas Bowman. He provided an insight that I hadn't really thought of before. "One might counter-argue that while we sometimes remove ourselves from 'our moment' by watching something through our smartphone screen compared to watching it with our eyes, networked technologies allow us to live in the moments of millions of people every day- such as following with eyewitness accounts the riots in Egypt, or the tsunami that struck Japan a few years ago..." (MNN).
I had never really thought of this before. Sure, you can read a newspaper about what is going on in countries across the globe and somewhat account for the depth of the situation, but you can't truly understand something until you see it with your own eyes. Until you get a real glimpse into what's happening. In this way, I think technology may be a real advantage to our society, in that we can comprehend the tragedies in other countries and do the best we can in helping those in need.
I had always thought we took for granted the things that we could be doing instead of using technology, but at the same time, I guess I never truly understood what exactly this power provides us. Sure, technology often gives us an outlet to waste time and procrastinate, but it also educates us on the events going on around us and gives us easy access to knowledge that can better our understanding of a certain topic. Although the use of technology may be a little too high and our dependency on it has definitely become an issue, it isn't all for the worst. I'm still not sure what people would do without technology, but I do know one thing: we absolutely need it.
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