kartooner

In my opin­ion, we are lead­ing to our own destruc­tion. Like you said Erik, we rely TOO much on mod­ern tech­nol­ogy for every­thing in our lives.

Weapons are becom­ing much stronger, they are falling into the wrong hands and will even­tu­ally lead to our own extermination.

I real­ize that sounds extreme, and maybe it is…but with us desto­ry­ing our world, destroy­ing our peo­ple, and rely­ing too heav­ily on oth­ers rather than our­selves, I just think that adds up to a big loss, FOR US.

We take nature for granted. Our gov­ern­ment doesn’t make sound deci­sions (have they ever?) espe­cially when it comes to nature and the envi­ron­ment. Why do we still rely on oil in 2006? There are plenty of alter­na­tives out there and I don’t think we spend enough $$$ on learn­ing those alter­na­tives. I used to be for this Iraq war because I felt it was jus­ti­fied, but I don’t see it going any­where any time soon. I real­ize a war on ter­ror­ism is not really a win / lose sit­u­a­tion because there is never a clear win­ner or loser since it will go on for­ever, but I just don’t feel like we are see­ing the type of progress that I thought we would. Granted, I KNOW for a fact that a lot of good stuff hap­pens over there and never gets reported, so some of my feel­ings are based on what the main­stream media wants us to know.

How often does the aver­age fam­ily sit down at night, AS A FAMILY, with no TV, and eat a home cooked meal? I am going to guess not as many as when we were kids and grow­ing up. I am 24, and fam­ily din­ners in a room where a TV wasn’t even present was nor­mal. Now, we live for TV, whether it’s stu­pid real­ity shows or con­stant Ter­ror alerts.

I am wor­ried more about the social impli­ca­tions of our actions than any­thing right now. I feel like the idea of “fam­ily” is pushed to the ground and is not impor­tant among many peo­ples eyes anymore.

I am afraid of the world my son will have to grow up in now, a world where even the word Christ­mas can get you ver­bally stoned to death. A world where every­thing we do can be seen on TV. A world where sex is the #1 sell­ing point for any­thing, a world where kids are hav­ing sex at much younger ages, doing drugs at much younger ages, etc…

I real­ize I am prob­a­bly mov­ing off the point a lit­tle, but I think the inter­net, though a great inven­tion, has been a big pro­po­nent in many of the prob­lems in our lives.

Advances in tech­nol­ogy is one of our great­est achievements…but unfor­tunetly it’s going to be our ulti­mate downfall.

Maybe not 50 years from now, maybe not 100 years from now, but we will even­tu­ally use up our world resources, cre­ate weapons that are beyond our com­pre­hen­sion right now, ulti­mately wipe our­selves out.

Take this bird flu that is hap­pen­ing. Maybe the main­stream media is pump­ing it up because it’s sweeps sea­son. Maybe it’s not as real of a threat glob­ally as they make us believe, or maybe it is. They are wor­ried that it could mutate to travel from human to human, and if it does, a world wide pan­demic could come where mil­lions would die.

I am not an overly reli­gious per­son, but I have read parts of revla­tions in the Bible and much of the stuff we are see­ing in our world seems to match up with stuff in the Bible…which just leads me to believe that we are on a path to our own destruction.

Sorry if that whole post sounds depressing…I am just con­cerned for our world and our way of life.

by Bryan on November 29, 2005 at 10:49 am. Reply #

Even though the Inter­net has helped me put food on the table for 10 years, I gotta blame it for the fast-paced soci­ety we are liv­ing now, which in turn demands fast-paced food, fast-paced com­mut­ing, fast-paced “qual­ity time” and even fast-paced bed­time sto­ries for your kids, who already come with built-in ADD. Thanks to e-mail, what once was expected to turn around in a mat­ter of weeks (or months), we get con­cerned if we don’t get that answer in a mat­ter of hours or, at worst, the next day. Haven’t you felt like time now just flies by and when you real­ize it, the day is already over — unlike when you were younger? (and I don’t even watch TV these days).

Even since I began doing web stuff for a liv­ing, I always have felt necce­sary to get and prac­tice job skills that don’t require the use of a com­puter. Unfor­tu­nately, jobs like that are few and far between these days, and pay amounts aren’t even close. I don’t think adopt­ing an Amish lifestyle is the answer to all prob­lems, but some bal­ance is cer­tainly on order.

by beto on November 29, 2005 at 6:28 pm. Reply #

“…In essence we’ve turned into a “Microwave Gen­er­a­tion”, which can be explained in two parts; one, that our reliance on tech­nol­ogy has become so “all con­sum­ing” and com­mon­place that with­out it we’d be in a state of shock and two, we as human beings want every­thing now (59 sec­onds or less it seems)…”

Both of these con­di­tions can be fur­ther explained by con­di­tion­ing. We, as humans, have been con­di­tioned to func­tion at our peak lev­els given the tools we’ve cre­ated for our­selves. That isn’t any dif­fer­ent than 16^th cen­tury man. Matt Bur­ris argues that 16^th cen­tury man would fare bet­ter against mod­ern man. In cer­tain sit­u­a­tions, pos­si­bly while in oth­ers, absolutely not. If 16^th cen­tury man’s life depended on being able to oper­ate a phone in order to call an ambu­lance for him­self, he’d be out of luck. Inversely, I doubt many peo­ple today pos­sess the knowl­edge to prop­erly ban­dage, touri­quet or cau­ter­ize a wound; first-aid 101 type-tasks com­mon­place dur­ing the 16^th century.

Addi­tion­ally, modern’s man’s impa­tience isn’t so new. I sus­pect that if I was a 16^th cen­tury man, I’d rather ride a horse for two days than walk for seven. If it’s pos­si­ble to have it sooner than later, than why not? On the other hand, I don’t know any­one who would rather expe­ri­ence a week­end at the beach in a few min­utes. We devote more time doing the things we want, and less time doing the things we don’t. Who would want to spend hours sweep­ing the car­pet, when you could just vac­cuum it in a few min­utes, or bet­ter yet, put your roomba to the job?

by Thomas Madrid on November 30, 2005 at 7:54 pm. Reply #

I’m a lit­tle older than most, and I was a junior in high­school when MTV hit the air­waves. It seems, to me, that every­thing started to change even back then. It became a “ME” gen­er­a­tion. I want “MY” MTV was the slo­gan. Tech­nol­ogy began to change. I remem­ber being newly mar­ried in 1989 and buy­ing my wife her first “car-phone” which was MOUNTED into the floor and had the huge antenna on the car.

Now, every­one and their dog has a cell-phone, dig­i­tal cam­era, iPod, etc. These are the kids of the “ME” gen­er­a­tion. I’m on cam­pus of a local Uni­ver­sity and you see every­one walk­ing around with a phone shoved in their ear. And, there are always instances of these “ME” gen­er­a­tion kids that don’t have the com­mon cour­tesy to turn them off dur­ing lec­ture. How dare the instruc­tor tell them to turn off the cell phone. Who IS (s)he to tell me anything?

Lap­tops were sup­posed to make us more pro­duc­tive and free us from the office. And, mobile phones were sup­posed to make our lives eas­ier. No more missed oppor­tu­ni­ties of hav­ing the spousal unit stop for some del­ish fast-food for the fam­ily meal that is eaten in front of the 52″ HDTV, Tivo capa­ble, satel­lite enter­tain­ment unit just because they are already in tran­sit and can’t be com­mu­ni­cated with!

Well, I’m ram­bling. But, while tech­nol­ogy has some awe­some ben­e­fits like being able to pin­point radi­a­tion to the size of a pin­head, it also has draw­backs such as affect­ing the atti­tudes of the “ME” and “ME2” generations.

I gotta run now — I need to go check my email, pay my cell-phone bill via the inter­net con­nec­tion, all while I watch my favorite cable pro­gram while record­ing another with my Tivo.

by stefan on December 7, 2005 at 10:43 pm. Reply #

am all agree with Eugene. Techonol­ogy is seven won­ders of the world =).

by Stacy on December 9, 2005 at 9:30 am. Reply #

In the 21.8 years that I have been alive I have seen the world com­pletely change. Even now I am amazed at the changes I see in cul­ture and pri­or­i­ties in both of my lit­tle brother’s gen­er­a­tions. My mid­dle brother is a senior in high school and I am shocked at the words, phrases, and slang that come out of his mouth, the way he dresses, and the music that he lis­tens to. My heart drops as I watch him text mes­sage some­one for 30 min­utes when he could have just called them and fin­ished the con­ver­sa­tion in five minutes.

He comes home from base­ball prac­tice and imme­di­ately watches ESPN. My mom gets frus­trated because he and my youngest brother do very lit­tle around the house. They do not grasp the work that my par­ents have put into the house, their jobs, etc. to make their life “easy”.

My youngest brother is a fresh­man in high school and for some rea­son he absolutely needed a cell phone. Why? You’re a fresh­man, you can’t even drive.

by Stephan on January 5, 2006 at 3:57 pm. Reply #