Is technology (phones, tv, internet, machinery) destroying human relationships?I personally believe it is in little ways. 1.) Advertisements are continually cheapening human interaction. Example: the man who is talking about finding his queen and we think he is talking about a woman but no he is talking about a sofa. 2.) Face to face interaction has become less and less important in society. We are all on our phones, watching TV or on our computers sending text messages or on facebook. 3.) Everywhere you look people are not looking at the person they are talking to, they are too busy with gadgets. I mean who here has been annoyed becuase the person they were talking to was texting?4. We now have more ways than ever to communicate but we are farther apart than we have ever been.So basically my question is, Do you think technology is good or bad for humans?
Our species has had problems interacting from the beginning. Technology is just another clutch.
Yes actually I believe it is also. I went from calling my mother like 6 times a day to sending her and my little sister IM's on Yahoo Messenger, and hitting up their myspace's. We do it more and more since she moved from where I am in Massachusetts to Georgia. Also, I Google everything. A Dictionary, Thesaurus, Phone Book, even Bible I can look up all the information online.
It's certainly not destroying human communication. In fact, in terms of breadth and scope, and in terms of the number of people an average person might communicate in the course of a day, it's increased human communication hugely. It is, however, causing a raid development in human communication. You note that we seldom seem to speak face to face anymore. That's certainly true, and yet how many more people per day do you think our ancestors spoke to face to face than we do today? As a percentage, surely a lot more, but in absolute numbers? I'd suggest about the same. We talk to more people, from much wider areas than our ancestors ever dreamed of. You note that people that we do talk to often are also using gadgets. I have been annoyed by this trend, but I think of it as a part of that evolution I mentioned before. We tend to multitask now, more than ever. I'm not sure that frenetic pace is a good thing, however. Finally, your draw a conclusion that we are now farther apart than ever before. I'm not sure I agree, and I don't see any evidence to support your conclusion directly. I have internet pen pals from all around the world, and in some ways, I think the ease of long range communication has brought us closer together than was ever possible before. I talk to people daily who have completely different takes upon world events, based on their culture and upbringing, and I think that variety of opinion is very enlightening. At any rate, we are having to evolve. Our modes of behavior, our traditions are changing, and while it styresses those of us who are comfortable with the old, traditional ways of doing things, in just a few short decades, most of us will be gone, and our children will be lamenting the changes they see.
