Vinny Nuccio Professor Churilla Eng 101 5/1/12 Technology and Its Shades of Gray In society today, technology

is central in everyday life. It is all around us, and most of us find that, after a day without our cellular phones or immediate internet access, we almost feel cut off from communication with the rest of the world. However, what society is oblivious to, is that technology isn't just beneficial, nor is it always necessary in the extreme advanced ways we see today. When it seemingly appears that humans' interpersonal communication skills are less refined than their typing and texting skills, we have an underlying problem. Technology today has not only weakened humans' ability to communicate face to face, but has been excessively relied on, dehumanizing people overall. Technology is defined as the branch of knowledge that deals with the creation and use of technical means and their interrelation with life, society, and the environment. Many people today feel that, without these technologies we have present, we'd be at a complete and total loss. Some may feel we'd even be less knowledgeable without the advanced means we have available to us today. This is where the over reliance comes into play. People are forgetting that a lot of what we have today we could do without, and still get by just fine, Humans are persuaded and convinced to believe that we exist in an age where technology is progressing so swiftly, but most of the things we rely on, such as cars, planes, and houses, have not changed in essentials for nearly a century (Cox 36). It seems with this obsessive reliance on how everything technologically today is bigger and better, we forget that it all had to originate some place, and

that was in the past. We've had many inventions founded in the past that could be considered a lot more important and valuable than those we see today, like the library and the telephone (Cox 36). David Cox states that this reliance is also causing us to put our enthusiasm with technology towards less potent matters, like air travel, opposed to some things higher importance, like diseases such as AIDS, TB, SARS or bird flu. It is true that with so much technology, we sometimes lose sight of what is really important, and just believe that our technology is superior enough to fix everything, when that's not really the case. David Cox mentions, on the subject of misplaced faith and over reliance we have on technology, It also fosters the delusion that ingenuity can sort out all our problems, which, in turn, disinclines us to apply the more realistic remedies that may be what we actually require. If we weren't worrying about things that seem somewhat trivial, compared to serious diseases, we'd be putting the knowledge we already have, realistically towards problems that matter more. To an extent, technology is better understood to be a necessity towards how we, as humans, get through our lives. However, we oversee that we do have all we need primarily, without the more advanced ideas and inventions that are being released now. Also, it would be difficult to argue that a person needs to communicate through something like a social networking website on the internet. Although some people do justifiably feel that these websites, such as Facebook, help us to connect with each other, what if they're really doing the opposite? What if too much exposure and use to only a virtual world is really isolating people instead of connecting them to each other? The definition of isolate is to set or place apart, detach or separate as to be alone. This is exactly what seems to be happening, primarily to younger adolescents. Statistics and research have proven that this isn't just rhetorical, but something to really consider. A growing body of research has shown that overuse of the Net can actually

isolate younger socially connected people, who are then, in turn, having less face to face interaction with the people close to them, such as family and friends (Staples 51). Researchers have also concluded that the time spent in direct contact with family members drops by as much as half, for every hour they are on the computer or using the internet at home (Staples 51). Social skills are decreasing because of the excessive use of the internet. Brent Staples writes, But teenagers who spend much of their lives hunched over computer screens miss the socializing, the real-world experience that would allow them to leave adolescence behind and grow into adulthood. (53). This simply means that you can't have the same type of relationships via the computer that you can in person. Without socializing and the extremely important experience of talking in person, you aren't really going to grow up properly. The isolation and social skills aren't the only problems; it's the patterns of negative effects we see in many younger people's communication skills that are far worse. Verbal communication is the most effective form of communication in my opinion, and it seems to be obvious why. You may have a flawless resume for a job interview that was finished by the computer, but if you can't present yourself in a clear, articulate way to a boss, why would he/she hire you? We see today that a lot of younger teenagers also write their essays and speak the way they type and text. There shouldn't be any mistakes where a student writes u instead of the proper you extremely often, but since this is what a lot of young people today are accustomed to doing so often on the computer and cellular phone, it is easily understood why it may happen. We must not allow young adolescents to feel that cyber space and their cell phones are, and should be, considered priorities. It is not only adolescents and younger people that we, as a society, should be concerned with, but children as well. It is unfortunate that, today, many children will not have a traditional childhood, like we had in the past and had to experience. When I think of my childhood, I think

of playgrounds, tag, baseball and football games. It seems that children today are only viewing these types of activities on the computer or television. In a normal classroom setting, when nineyear-old kids were asked what they did after school, of the sixteen children in a classroom, two of whom were not allowed to go outside, four said they watched television or talked on the telephone, six played video games, and only four played outside. That would mean that only 25% of nine-year-old children are playing outside after school (Sobel 102). This erosion of childhood concerns me and computers seem like a river in flood washing away the soil that roots children to the natural world. (Sobel 102). David Sobel explains in this quote how children obsessive nature with computers and TV indoors is diminishing their desire to want to engage in any outdoor activities which will really benefit them. True balance and centered emerge from doing adventurous things outside that you can't experience from something electrically charged indoors (Sobel 103). Creativity is also lacking when children are sitting inside on the computer all the time. Although it is true that children can gain something educationally from computers, to an extent, they will mature through interactions with concrete materials, speaking with adults who care for them, and their own groups of peers (Sobel 103).

Works Cited Cox, David, Technohype Bites Back, New Stateman, January 9, 2006. Copyright 2006 New Statesman, Ltd. Reproduced by permission. Haugen, David, and Susan Musser, ed. Technology and Society. Farmington, MI: Thomson Gale, 2007. Print. Sobel, David, Take Back the Afternoon: Preserving the Landscape of Childhood in Spite of Computers, New Horizons for Learning. All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of the author. Staples, Brent, What Adolescents Miss When We Let Them Grow Up in Cyperspace, New York Times, May 29, 2004. Copyright 2004 by the New York Times Company. Reproduced by permission.