Often when we reflect on technological differences, or just any general changes to life, it’s easy to convince ourselves that life has completely changed. It is simple to learn about history and distance ourselves so much from the past to think that our lives are not comparable at all anymore. Technology has played a huge role in facilitating this school of thought. We talk to our parents and hear the old adage “when I was your age…” and we think something similar to the point of “how did they ever possibly live life?”. However, Neil Postman, in his article titled “Five Things We Need to Know” stated “there is no excaping from ourselves. The human dilemma is as it has always been, and it is a delusion to believe that the technological changes of our era have rendered irrelevant the wisdom of the ages and the sages.” Simply put the name of the game has not changed, what has changed is the way we play the game.
Henry David Thoreau mused that “all our inventions are but improved means to an unimproved end.” We all have different goals and purposes in life. Including both social and professional aspects of our lives. Life itself has not changed during all of our technological advances. Unless there is a device I am unaware of that keeps you immortal, we are all on this Earth for a short time. We live and we die. It’s a morbid outlook on life, but one that nonetheless holds true. What we choose to make of our lives is a matter of choice. Technology has simply come to give us both new challenges and new opportunities, each wave of invention has proved to stretch society and culture. I think this is what keeps life dynamic and interesting, we are constantly being challenged and the way in which we live life is constantly changing.
To reflect major technological inventions in history and the results of said inventions was interesting to read about in this week’s article. It certainly put perspective on all of the boom in social media advances in the past 10 years. It may seem crazy and overwhelming now, but I am sure that there is a purpose and there are positive changes for our lives.