Personally, I didn’t think that people were overly dependent on technology until I saw a photo on Google images. It was a photo of people on a subway station platform. Featured were people standing up and sitting down waiting for the next subway train. Every single person on the picture was looking down at their mobile phone, and the caption on the image said, “2014 Zombies.” This image stuck a cord with me, and suddenly I started to notice just how overly dependent we are on technology.
Now I notice how dependant we are on technology on a daily basis. I saw an episode of South Park a few years ago where the Internet goes down. The episode is called “Over logging” and it shows a world without the Internet. It shows in a comical way about how over dependant we are on the Internet, for everything from news reports to contacting people at work. It exaggerated the point for comic effect, but the fact that people couldn’t find out why the Internet went down because they get their news from the Internet was a very good point.
People use their phone and the Internet these days for everything from paying their bills to finding the nearest gas station. Take away these luxuries and people will have a hard time adjusting back to buying everything from retail outlets and having to go to registered businesses to pay their bills, or worse yet, having to mail a check to the billing companies.
Transport is another example of how we have become overly dependent on technology. People use cars and public transport to get to work. As a result, commercial and industrial sectors are much bigger and residential structures are further away. The availability of transport has pushed housing so far from peoples’ places of work that people are forced to rely on technology such as cars and public transport in order to get to work.
Technology has changed the dynamic in developed world homes. Women are able to work, partially because of the women’s rights movement, and partially because of technology. If it were not for technology, then at least one person would have to stay home to help care for the kids and fix the house, but now we may have a washing machine do all the work so that someone doesn’t have to spend hours hand washing, and a TV and games console means kids do not need watching because they can entertain themselves.
Conclusion
The use of technology has manufactured our dependence on it. The fact that people use the Internet so much has made communication via the mail and even via the phone a lot less common and it has consequently led to it being used less and less. The overuse of the Internet has made it so that people do not have to go to retail outlets. The use of transportation other than walking a cycling has led to homes being further away from work so that people are forced to use cars or public transport. By using technology, people are having alternative options removed from them. People are forced to use technology because it is popular, ergo alternate methods were removed and choices were limited/restricted. All of this has lead to a dependence on technology.
