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The
views expressed
on this page are soley those of the author and do not
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represent the views of County News Online
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What Have We
Become?
By Will McCabe
Technology is growing ever faster as years progress. Sure, I was never
around without TV or air conditioning, but I do remember a time before
I-phones and Blu-ray, and I do remember a time when my family didn’t
have the internet and I practiced typing on a typewriter! Nowadays,
kids a third of my age own devices that hold more technological power
than even the laptop I am typing this on.
I can agree that we have had many benefits come from the increase in
technology, but at what cost? Yeah, every few years, a movie or
celebrity or politician waves their arms around and holds up a sign
saying: “The machines will turn against us!” but think about it: IBM
has created a thinking computer, named WATSON. Instead of having
doctors analyze patients, IBM wants WATSON to be used instead. I’m not
saying we will have a Hal, T-1000, or I, Robot situation. However, not
only could that be eliminating jobs, but that means we are potentially
putting our health in the mercy of a computer. Who says he cannot be
hacked? Or have a glitch? Or shut down?
Would we even need people to become doctors or scientists when we just
have computers to do this for us? And don’t even get me started on what
technology has done to books and writing! The thing is, when we create
these devices to solve our problems, we become ignorant of how we
solved them beforehand. Think about it, if we ever had a month-long
blackout, even if it was just in a few states, how would we
survive?
Here is a title from the Daily Mail from 2011 about the rumors that
Facebook was going to be shut down forever: “Facebook closing hoax goes
viral as thousands mourn ‘loss’ of social network”. Sounds crazy? This
is what the first sentence of the article says: “It sparked a panic
that quickly spread across the online social community” (Smith).
Really, a panic? Ebola caused a panic. The swine flu caused a panic.
9/11 caused a panic. Mankind should not go into a panic over a shutdown
of a social network. True, that paper came out about four years ago,
but do you think we have improved within those four years? Remember the
panic that Hostess was closing down forever? Yeah, even I got caught up
in that one.
If you google search news on “ebola,” you get 15,800,000 hits, 9/11
gets 15,300,000 results, and the swine flu gets 3,190,000 hits. If you
google search news on “Facebook,” you get 153,000,000 results, which is
over four times more hits than the previous three searches combined.
Needless to say, I don’t own an account on Facebook, Twitter or any
other sites. I still seem to have a social life without Twitter! I
haven’t burst into flames or withered away without a Facebook account.
If we have become so dependent on a social media website, what would
happen if our TVs stopped working? Or our cell phones? Is our society
really this dependent on social media and technology? Maybe the best
technology ever made was what was made in the Beginning; what wasn’t
built by human hands, and that we should be in more of a panic if the
stars start going out as opposed to if our social media websites start
shutting down.
Read the source on Facebook here
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