Enslaved to Technology

Is technology an addiction? Well, spend a few hours around my 17-year-old who treats her iPhone like it’s her first born and you’ll have your answer.
 
On a typical weeknight, I come home after a day connected to my computer and “Smart” phone to find the family in the following positions:
 
Wife: On computer with headset or Skype-ing with someone on the other side of the globe.
 
Son: Sitting on couch watching TV, playing games on iTouch with laptop nearby.

Photo Credit: wikipedia.com

 
Daughter: Holed up in bedroom video chatting on her MacBook Air while Tweeting at speed that crushes the sound barrier.
 
These are the reasons I could enthusiastically relate to Bill Davidow’s recent article in The Atlantic, “Technology Addiction Will Lead to Our Evolution or Enslavement.”
 
After reading Davidow’s piece, I’m not so sure that machines enslaving the human race someday is so far-fetched. I’m certain Newt “Fly Me to The Moon” Gingrich might agree.
 
Anyway, one of the most captivating points Davidow makes is that “for the past 150,000 generations, evolution has designed our minds, brains, and body to live in only one world at a time. When we attempt to live in two simultaneously – the physical and the virtual – the consequences can be very serious.”
 
Davidow highlights how technology can be a marvel (laptops in the operating room) and a menace (driving while under the influence of texting), and ponders whether or not Orwellian control over our technology use might actually be a good idea.
 
Frankly, if I had more time, I’d consider it, but I’m too busy answering my daughter’s text, while simultaneously on hold with customer service about my Android phone, Tweeting about last night’s dinner and drafting my blog item on my iPad.

— Ron Neal, rneal@pondel.com