As a member of the iPod generation, I understand the need for technology, but lately, it’s just seems to be getting a bit absurd.Our modern world can really be defined by one word: convenience. That’s what we need; that’s what we want. We, as consumers and as happy members of the Information Age, have declared that if it takes us longer to get the thing that we want than to actually use the thing that we want, we don’t want it.
Let me explain. I love technology. I really do. But I love it and use it when I need to. If I’m bored waiting for a class to start or sitting in my car at a traffic light, I don’t need to bust out my cell phone and start watching YouTube videos. I’ll think about something, talk to a fellow student, or even go so far as opening a book.
If I’m sitting in a room full of people that I don’t know, I’m not going to plug my ear phones in and jam out to David Bowie’s “Low” on my brand new, yet already smudgy-looking iPod touch! You know what I’d do in that situation? Interact with other people!
I remember before we could watch television from the palm of our hand and play Pac-Man on our Blackberries, my fellow youngsters and I would joke about homeschooled kids in our neighborhood, how they couldn’t talk to anybody, and how they don’t have any friends. Well, that’s what this overload of convenient technology is doing to us!
We are all becoming perpetual home schooled kids. We don’t need to talk to each other. We can text! Calling loved ones? Pshaw! I can Tweet!
Even so much as looking at each other, why bother? We can just check each other’s Facebook profiles! Who needs to give out classwork when I can throw it on Blackboard! (Yeah, I’m calling you out, Blackboard.)
As with most annoying things in life, it was a commercial on TV that really threw me over the edge. What I saw was an advertisement on television, for a product called MobileTV, a mobile digital television. It’s like my generation feels that if we aren’t staring at a glowing screen, it’s not worth looking at.
It’s like people feel that they don’t get enough television already from their laptops, phones, classrooms, restaurants, bars, nail salons, and, oh I forgot about this one, their television set at home. (How primitive.)
To sum it up, I feel that technology is a fantastic tool and should be further developed, in the right directions. A vast world of possibilities is open to our generation in the way of technological evolution, and we should invest this opportunity in real issues and positive applications, not just as a way of distracting and disassociating us from others.
After all, don’t you get enough “Jersey Shore” already? You really don’t have to carry it around in your pocket.