Preview

How Does Technology Affect Our Lives

Powerful Essays
Open Document
Open Document
1225 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
How Does Technology Affect Our Lives
Science and technology affects us all in key positions that can determine the course of events in our lives and can also shape the consciousness of a generation. Science has interwoven with our lives up to such an extent that it influences the routine workings of our everyday lives. Technology such as “robots” is where we apply our scientific knowledge to achieve the goals of our interests. It is we who influences the technologies we create ourselves for our own purposes and good particularly, bring about a social change in technology. We create such technologies for our own benefits and ease which infers to a “projection” kind of relationship. Sherry Turkle’s essay, “Selections from Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less …show more content…
Clearly, this infers to a “projection” kind of relationship between humans and technology. Furthermore, Watters somewhat has a similar notion of this “projection” kind of relationship between humans and technology. He says that: “The intense trust the GlaxoSmithKline brain trust showed in the topic of how culture shapes the illness experience made sense given the thing of the meeting. The class of antidepressant drugs known as serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) had become the wonder drug of the 1990s, at least in terms of the profits they’d garnered for the drug company” (Watters 515). Watters tracks how “GlaxoSmithKline” sought to change the cultural beliefs of the Japanese. For him, using science and technology to make the drugs and getting those drugs approved in Japan was a costly gamble. Like “GlaxoSmithKline,” other companies around the globe too use science and technology to produce drugs with their ultimate goal of filling in …show more content…
We develop different new technologies in order to “project” our desires and emotions thereby making our lives easier. Certainly, this does not intend to benefit us always. In her essay, Turkle mainly talks about the “projection” and “engagement” kind of relationships between individuals and the technologies they create. “Projection” is a kind of relationship in which only one person’s own desires and wants are taken into consideration which is the sneakiest form of internal sabotage. “Engagement” is a kind of relationship where in both people’s desires and wants are taken into consideration thus developing a healthy and meaningful connection amongst the two: “in describing people’s relationships with computers, I have often used the metaphor of the Rorschach, the inkblot test that psychologists use as a screen onto which people can project feelings and styles of thought. But as a children interact with sociable robots like Furbies, they move beyond a psychology projection to a new psychology of engagement” (Turkle 470). As adults, our relationship with science and technology is mainly to “project” our feelings and emotions. But when talking of children’s brush with technology, surprisingly, there is an “engagement” kind of relationship between the

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    The main argument this book explores is not between humanists and scientists, but between technology and everybody else. Most people believe that technology is a friend. It is a friend that asks for trust and obedience, which most give because its gifts are bountiful. The dark side it that it creates a culture without moral foundation, undermines certain mental processes and social relations that make human life worth living. Technology is both a friend and enemy. The book tries to explain when, how and why technology became a particularly dangerous enemy.…

    • 1066 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In the article “All Can Be Lost: The Risk of Putting Our Knowledge in the Hands of Machines”, Nicholas Carr conveys a message on how an overreliance with technology causes people to become helpless and naïve. Humans are undeniably defective; however, with the perfection in automation, computers have the capability to replace imperfect people. Demonstrated throughout Carr’s article, his concern for the future of humanity became apparent though the overreliance, laziness, and observational traits people have acquired as technology has advanced.…

    • 300 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    As an illustration, Turkle states “Might such robotic arrangements even benefit the elderly and their children in the short run in a feel-good sense but be bad for us in our lives as moral being?” (280). The author claims that because of many good benefits of technology, people become more addicted to modern machines and the virtual world than their real life. And because of attaching to technology, people seem to lose their respect for human beings. I completely agree with Turkle on this argument about the issue that being strongly dependent on technology could affect or change our morality negatively. Specifically, I have the example of my neighbor’s son. He is just twelve years old, and he is addicted to violent games on the internet. Thus, he repeats aggression and violent action from those games, and he tends to use violence in real life to solve his problems. Once in the morning, I saw him throw his breakfast and his backpack towards his parents as they walked him to the school bus. Because he just wanted to stay home and play games all day instead of going to school. He pretended to be the characters in violent games, so he was very aggressive in solving his problems in reality. I feel sorry for his parents and him because the affect of playing computer games makes him a bad child, losing the respect for his parents. Moreover, I have another example of this issue that demonstrates…

    • 1435 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    There are two articles, which talks about how high technology influences and connects with humans’ lives respectively. In Lisa Belkin’s essay “The Made-to-Order Savior”, she describes a medical technology that greatly relieves a child’s blood disease through bone-marrow transplant. In order to increase the odds of transplant, the bone-marrow donor should be the patient’s brothers or sisters so that their core blood can get match. Although this technology saves children’ lives, it results in ethical issues. Doctors and children’ parents are questioned to be the nature manipulators because of their unfair treatment to donors. In normal lives, more people are likely to gain the ideal relationships via technology. In Sherry Turkle’s article “Alone Together”, she presents the rapid development and popularity of high-tech products such as robots and cell phones. Inborn loneliness drives people to seek for companionships. But the fear of intimacy makes them reply on technology. High tech-tools endows people’s interactions with safety and flexibility. Meantime, it misleads them to lose control and realness…

    • 2029 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Transhumanists would like to obtain from technology capacities that humans do not currently have, without making an effort to build, physically or spiritually, to develop them from the interior. To assert that there would be a higher stage of the human being, accessible only by technology, is at the bottom, to consider that the natural person is disabled. Sherry turkle added that, "Technology is seductive when what it offers meets our human vulnerabilities." So innovations are almost always presented from the reassuring angle of a handicap to be compensated. A desire of aid justifies these inventions, but at a long run, it tends to think that humans are biologically deficient. They must be increased. This theory is a rather delicate notion. It has begun since the appearance of man and is part of continuity. For example, the bottle is an increased breast; the hammer is a substitute hand, the mouse as the prosthesis of an index that points. This generation of innovation is external tools that can be grasped and used. They do not change our relationship to the world. They just allow us to act more efficiently. Currently the relationship with technology is inverse. The machine is no longer external. The man is inside it. It has become the world in which it lives, thinks, seduces, plays, exchanges. We are faced with a break that upsets the relationship with others, the world and ourselves. The…

    • 1519 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Each chapter focuses on a different type of robot or technology as she recites people’s firsthand accounts on the impact of texting and social media in society. It appears that most if not all of these accounts seem to evoke a negative feeling towards texting and social media because of the effects these tools of communication have on a person. The idea of Turkle’s that texting and social media has such an impact of negativity on a person and the people they involve themselves with holds much truth because of the way…

    • 504 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    1. Of this week’s reading Alone Together by Sherry Turkle draw on various observation between human being and machine that indicates humans are beginning to rely too much on technology , and that it may have a negative effect on how humans connect with one another.…

    • 236 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Our constant access to the electronic highway through mobile devices has caused the human population to develop numerous antisocial phone skills. Being a technologically advanced society, our realities have become less important than the deliberately concocted stories that we tell. The availability of mobile devices have led us to multidimensional engagement, causing us to constantly ignore people and our surroundings because we are paying more attention to the social world in which we are continuously involved. Technology has led to the rise of a culture of availability due to the continual advancements and developments of mobile devices. As a society, we have a certain expectation of immediacy, which has become nothing but a burden to civilization. Unfortunately, our mobile devices are causing society to become less human rather than more human.…

    • 916 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In class, we listened to Sherry Turkle’s TED Talk. Sherry Turkle is a professor, author, consultant, and researcher. She has spent 30 years researching the psychology of people’s relationships with technology. In 2012, she gave a TED talk – Connected, but alone? She talked about how technology is powerful, and it is changing who we are. We treat technology as a friend. She said that “the feeling that no one is listening to me makes us want to spend time…

    • 339 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Since the early centuries, the emergence of technology has come a long way. Various people have worked to enhance technology through the development of new branches of technology such as tablets. Technology has become so intricate that the development of new software has opened a new gate in which inventors and entrepreneurs producing thus technology can take. This has led to the emergence of Social Medias. This new source of communication and interacting has impacted the society in a very controversial way. Technology has proven to impact the economy of the world as well. In a more personal level, the incorporation of technology in one’s life has had an effect on the development of one’s mind. Some critics say that technology however has proven…

    • 1722 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Better Essays

    Sherry Turkle is a clinical psychologist who writes about the way technology has changed our way of thinking. Turkle said we have to ask whether current technology is leading us in directions that serve our human purposes (327). She is the author of several books that deal with how technology helped to make us expect more from computers and less from each other. Turkle pointed out that the tools we use to think, change the ways in which we they think. The computer has had a huge impact over the habits of our mind.…

    • 922 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Better Essays

    Advancements

    • 1343 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Technological, social, and cultural advancements have helped our society by making our lives easier. One example is from an excerpt from a Japanese light novel called Kino no Tabi (“Land of Shared Pain”). In this piece the protagonist Kino and her talking motorcycle Hermes pass through a town where humans live apart because of a feeling serum that allowed them to feel the pain of everyone around them; however, there are many helpful robots. “Discovering new medicines, perusing the sciences, creating works of literature, art, and music.” (Sigsawa 60). In this quote, Kino is talking to a man named Kyoshi who they found living in the town. He is explaining how much the people of the town were able to do because they had robots to do all the simple and easy tasks. By having machines to do those things, they had…

    • 1343 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    In the article slaves to technology which appeared in signe Wilkinson Editorial cartoon on 2007 the writer Karen Lui argues that we human are nowadays control by technology. She use critical tone making the reader to feel that we human being completely depend on technology. Imaginary image of cartoon has been used to make the reader realize how technology wastes our precious time. The writer’s main contention is we human should stop adoration of technology.…

    • 753 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    9. Robots and artificial intelligence. The term “robot” was coined by Czechoslovakian playwright Karel Capek in 1920 — “robota” being a Czech word for tedious labor — but the first real industrial robot was built in 1954 by George Devol. Five years later, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology founded its Artificial Intelligence Laboratory in a quest to mechanically mimic human minds as well as hands. Today, robots assemble products better, faster and often cheaper than manual laborers, while more than 8 million U.S. airline flights a year are scheduled, guided and flown with the superhuman assistance of advanced software. Still, some Americans eye such systems with the cynical view of novelist Kurt Vonnegut, whose 1952 story “Player Piano” warned that the machines might leave people without a purpose — or a job.…

    • 1127 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Nowadays, many people say that computers make life more complex. However I do not agree with that. I think computers ease our lives in many ways. They help us to store our documents as well as not occupying a place. Also, we can make a great profit on them by using the internet which is helping us on our researches by lessen the time that we spend for researches. Moreover, we can pacify ourselves by doing some activities on computers.…

    • 419 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays