Technology and America

The definition of “technology” from Dictionary.com states:

The branch of knowledge that deals with the creation and use of technical means and their interrelation with life, society, and the environment, drawing upon such subjects as industrial arts, engineering, applied science, and pure science.  (Dictionary.com) 

So, technology is meant to deal with life, society,and the environment.  But how far does the convenience of technology reach?  It would seem that technology can only go so far.  In other words, technology is too convenient.  People are becoming very dependent on it for travel, entertainment, and thinking up new ideas.  Technology dehumanizes people by doing too much work for us, damaging via video games and causing all-around poor human interaction skills.

Technology performs too many simple, everyday tasks for us, which replaces creative minds.  More simply put, “technology is prostituting what [it means] to be human.”  (Winslow).  In early American society, artists used paints and paper for designing work.  They used their creative skills to produce wonderful, original graphic art.  Today, people use programs such as “Photo Shop” to create and design.  The program does the creative work and the thinking and designing.  Technology not only replaces creative minds, but it also replaces work ethic.  In early human development, cave men warmed their food with fire.  Today, people simply place food in a microwave and the microwave does all of the work for us.  Some say technology is turning the human race into robots, mindless beings that have technology do all the work, no creative minds and no work ethic.  Online dating sites, such as “EHarmony,” do the work of finding a match for people.  A total of 63 million people, representing 31% of the American population, used a dating site as of March 5, 2006.  (Clemmitt).  American people no longer go looking for a date; they go online instead.  The dating site does the “sweet talking” for us, and diminishes our face to face communication skills.  To sum up, an excerpt from Yahoo! Answers explains: “Technological advances in just about every field imaginable have made our lives easier, but at the same time, have we lost our ability to do things for ourselves?”  (Brian).  Yes, we indeed have lost our ability to do things for ourselves.  We are very dependent on technology.