Topic 3

Tyrone Arnold Final Draft

The Myth of the Machine

If there is one true religion in the world it is that of the worship of technology. Christian or Jewish, Muslim or Islamic, all humans flock to the altar of technology with the outright belief that it is the sole path to improvement in our lives, and that if it does fail even cataclysmically all it will take to fix the problem is another cutting edge technology to restore normality. This is, without doubt, the single greatest fault in modern spiritus mundi. The development of children is severely hampered both socially and physically due to the total intrusion of the cell phone, television, laptop and Ipad. Communication between teenagers and adults is on the brink of collapse; few mutual interests and a lack of conversational skills largely as a result of social media - means that the vital link between parent and child, as well as between siblings, is now minimal and could soon become negligible. Lastly, modern technology gives rise to the opportunity to have an entirely separate identity a digital self. Modern children as a result of technology have a different perception of space than did the previous generation. Virtual environments such as computer games and the internet mean that children can explore almost anything whilst in front of a computer. David Elkind states: The ability to explore and create spaces digitally, without going anywhere, keeps many young people at the computer and almost certainly contributes to obesity among the younger generation. Social structure amongst children is also rapidly changing research has shown that approximately 8 hours of play is lost every week due to technology; this has led to a deterioration in the social skills and, consequentially, the lore of childhood; it is no longer clear to a child what he or she must do in order to become part of the group as the traditional games do not take place to a large extent. This lack of clarity can have an extremely negative effect on the self-confidence of a child. Modern methods of communication such as the use of instant messaging applications, e-mail and cell phones - means that people often multitask during communication (i.e. a person may be surfing the internet at the same time as e-mailing). This has led to a decrease in the quality of communication as well as a decrease in face-to-face communication. This is explicitly evident in communication between adults and children technology means that children are spending more time indoors and are therefore not engaging in the same activities as were the previous generation. This lack of common interests makes communication difficult between adults and children compounded by the fact that children are not learning face-to-face conversation skills

because of their continuous interaction with social media applications such as Facebook and Twitter. The underlying problem in many of the above issues, and surrounding problems, is that modern technology allows for the creation of an online identity which can be used, changed and discarded at will. The online identity can be used as a mask to portray what one may wish to believe about oneself or to portray an entirely different person for any number of purposes. In essence the problem is that on the internet, nobody knows youre a dog. Thus humans lose their connection with humanity in their worship of technology. The connection between people is blurred and diminished as technology blurs the identity of people. Children and adults lose their ability to communicate with one another as the development of children is impaired. Possibly the only true religious following is destroying mankinds major separation from other animals that of communication.