The three main technologically advancements in our lives are TVs, phones and computers, and each started with its own purpose.
Now you can use the Internet from your TV, watch TV and use the Internet on your phone and you can watch TV and make phone calls through your computer.
We’re paying thousands of dollars on three different sized screens that do pretty much the same thing (and if they could figure out a way to make the screens feed us and be our friend, I’m convinced most people would never leave their homes).
The purpose of technology is to make things in our life more convenient, help us be more efficient and entertain us, but at the same time it’s just encouraging us be lazy.
Now if you approve of something your friend did, like their status of “Just got into college! Omg! I’m so happy!” instead of going through the trouble of stringing together a set of words to make a sentence, you can just hit a thumbs up button to let them know “I like this.”
Remember when making friends consisted of being introduced to someone and then having a conversation with them?
Now all you need to do is scroll through a list of names and pictures until you figure, “Hey, I vaguely remember seeing that person, they must be my friend” and then click “send a friend request.”
Also, if you want a quick, easy way to meet new people without being forced to go outside, now you can do it from the comfort of your basement on chatroullette.com.
You can be as picky and shallow as you want.
If you don’t like someone, just hit the “next” button to meet someone new. Making friends has never been so easy! (And by “making friends” I mean seeing grown men masturbate on camera.)
And with the advancement in video game graphics, we’ve gotten so close to replicating the look of actually being outside, you’ll feel like you’re actually there and forget you’ve been on a couch for the last six hours with the blinds closed.
Besides obvious benefits like these, however, sometimes we get so excited about some new technology that we don’t realize it could potentially make something we’ve been doing for ages seem completely worthless, like printing books.
Look at Kindle: the new, digital media reader from Amazon which can hold up to 5,000 books on something smaller than the size of one.
It’s perfect!
But now what are we going to do with the millions of hardcopy books we have?
We have a choice to make now: you can either save trees by using Kindle or save jobs by buying those boring old hardcopy books.
It’ll probably just work itself out like the introduction of Netflix. Everyone profited from that one, right?
Even after all we’ve done through the advancements of technology over the years, we’ll still continue to advance and look back at times when we didn’t have things and think of how ridiculous it was.
Try to think about living life without cell phones or the Internet.
The absence of just those two things would make your day feel so much more boring (and productive).
It’s funny to think that the way we feel about the iPhone and iPad is a feeling similar to the one people felt hundreds of years ago when the light bulb was invented.
“Whoa did you see that thing! It’s like having a tiny sun that you can turn on and off whenever you want! Even after nightfall!
We’ll never be satisfied with how far we’ve come and we’ll always be looking forward to what we could have.
The most common things people tend to look for in the future are flying cars, teleportation deices and time machines. Even if that technology does come to exist one day, it doesn’t matter, because you won’t be allowed use it.
Whenever someone explains how they would use a time machine it either ends in “…then I’d be really rich” or “…then I’d kill him.”
Considering the way people are obsessed with the constant evolving technology, I wouldn’t be surprised to see the movie Surrogates come true. (Don’t feel bad if you don’t get that reference; nobody saw Surrogates. It’s really not that good).
As long as I can still be sitting in my car yelling out, “GPS! McDonald’s!” and then have my car pull it up for me, I’ll forever be grateful.
John Jacobs can be reached at jjacobs@spartans.ut.edu.