In today's Nueva magazine of La Gaceta, there is an essay reflecting on the success of isolation and failure to truly communicate by means of new tech gadgets such as mp3s, ipods, laptops, etc. The comment was triggered by the death of a teenager who was run over by a car because he could not hear the car coming while crossing the street in his own mp3 bubble. It sounds terrible and one tends to blame the new technology for this kid's tragedy, but I'm not sure that we see the whole picture when assessing the impact of technology on our lives. Rather than reject and resist it, we should adopt it and learn how to use it wisely.
On that same newspaper, in the Showbiz section there is a page long article on the immense range of possibilities that new tech gives musicians at the moment of creating music. There are also ads in which the requirements include a long list of software the successful candidate should handle. My feeling is that technology is part of our reality and instead of demonizing it, we should figure out how to optimize its use in the different areas of our life.
With every new advancement or invention, people have been reluctant to accept it. The appearance of the radio made skeptics believe that real person to person conversation would never be the same. A similar reaction was triggered by the television and other new gadgets. Now the internet and the videogames are to blame for all our teenagers' and children's evils. And we are rather slow to incorporate these tools as part of our repertoire to help them learn more and better. By complaining about it, we won't make it disappear or solve any of the bad consequences of its wrong use.
2 comments:
From where I sit the last thing you say is the key. Technology is here! It has its pros and its cons, but ultimately we need to know both sides and optimize the best of it.
I agree with this completely. People are so quick to blame technology for this and for that, but people never take the time to realize that the same trends have already taken place with TV and radio. I think the internet is the new TV, you can use it for very useful information or for entertainment purposes to "fry your brain." Social skills will still be in some, and those are the ones that will ultimately rise above the rest in the physical world. The others may thrive in the cyberworld, the new space created through the internet, but this world is extremely fast paced and seems to be hit or miss in terms of success.
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