Monday, March 8, 2010
Fancy Old People Who were Important to Our parents.
For the last couple of days I have been reading a book called The Dumbest Generation by Mark Bauerlein. The book talks about how our generation is not capitalizing on learning with the many resources we have. It also stresses how technology is making us dumber. While I don’t agree with most of it, the book does bring up an excellent debatable question. Is technology making us dumber as a society? In our class discussions I frequently find myself clueless when Dr. Tiff asks about a famous person in history. But if she ever asked about anyone famous person in the last 30 years I could tell her something about them. Personally I don’t find many of the historical pieces appealing to read. On almost any day I would pick a magazine over a book. Not to say that the book isn’t good, but a magazine tells us about what is current and new, which makes me think more progressively instead of trying to figure out a complex plot. So my question to you is “Do you feel that technology has a negative effect on society? An also how does it affect literature?”
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I think tech. has both positive and negative effects on society.
ReplyDelete_____
Positive:
-Allows for progress in sciences.
-Allows us to solve problems in a more efficient manner.
Negative:
-May decrease the importance of history and literature.
-Laziness.
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Technology affects literature (all except for non-fiction) by decreasing the importance of it due to the relative subjectivity of literature compared to what is being achieved and discovered by technology. And since literature is connected to history, the latter also reduces in importance, creating a world void of historical perspective.
Dr. Tiff defends herself concerning Kevin's remarks: Hey! Amitav Ghosh *is* famous and has lived within the past 30 years!
ReplyDeleteAlso, by very definition, someone "famous" should be well known long after 30 years is over and done with!
Technology may have a hand in our generation's lack of knowledge of history, especially of classic literature. Instead of reading, children prefer to play video games, or watch television, or play games on the computer. Some cinema has caught this trend of us relying on technology (I just finished watching "Avatar" for the second time, and if you have seen it, you know that it ends up being a battle between technology and "old ways"), and warns against too much reliance on technology.
ReplyDeleteIs this reliance on technology such a bad thing though? Some would argue that these technological advances are necessary to the progression of our society. It's true that much of the technology being developed is used for our benefit-- advanced medical tools/treatments, better transportation and communication which is used for not only global diplomacy, but also helps to improve farming and produce transportation, which means more food developed, and less food wasted. This, as well as other technological advances can lead to an improved trade and economy. So how can something so beneficial be bad?
In "Spider Man", the uncle character utters the famous line "With great power comes great responsibility". This line lends itself to the idea of a balance. Like with anything else (eg, religion, technology, science, power, etc.) there can always be too much of something. There needs to exist a balance between technology and everything else. The film "Wall-e" best illustrates the idea of too much technology-- humans become lazy, stupid creatures who rely completely on the technology created by their ancestors. The balance would allow for new advances in technology for the overall benefit of the population, however it would also require knowledge and understanding of history, including classic literature as well as regular historical research.
I know I kind of went off on a tangent there, but I think I answered the question that Kevin posed...
Too much of a good thing can be a bad thing. In this day, technology makes the most arduous task easy, such as acquiring a meal. Just a few hundred years ago, people spent a large percent of their lives just trying to gather food and survive. These days, slaughter houses can slaughter 100 cows per minute. Also, it is a lot easier to get around with the inventions of cars and airplanes. On the large scale, technology tends to make people lazier. We have so much more free time than humans in the past ever had. But we tend to waste our time doing pointless things. Technology also contributes to a lot of our wasted time (television and telephones). Due to the low physical activity of people these days, obesity rates are rising. Here are some of the negative contributions from technology. But can you blame people? A lot of technological inventions are made with the intent of mitigating effort. So naturally, people would tend to become lazy.
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