Is our culture obsessed with technology?

at home i am usually on the computer.. but i dont do much with my phone other than looking at clock and occasional texting (like hot guy sighting).
now idk man lol. if you're talking about ppl who have game apps on their phone and do those all day long along with texts and fb and twitter.. i dont know man hahaha.

i am not much consumed with portable technology and i am still anti social :/

also, i have actually made more good online friends as opposed to real life friends lol.
it's nice to have friends from different area of life and age and countries lol.

I have still yet to meet a UK friend my age

 

It's not so much the technology as it is the people who use it. Just like anything else in life, its the lack of moderation that has made technology so consuming. For instance, I am typing this using the lastest in portable gaming technology, this thing has an amazing screen (touch sensitive of course), two cameras, a rear touch pad, pictures, videos, music, internet, and awesome games. It's the PS Vita, by the way, and I highly recomend it. I am either on this, or my PS 3, however, I can easily put these things down and spend quality time with my parents. I can easily put them down and practice my piano, or other important things that I need to do. I don't use facebook or twitter. If people could use technology in moderation and still be sociable in face to face situations, the world would be a better place. But with that being said, people are so addicted to technology because they can hide behind it, it's completely anonymous. Because of that, they can say whatever they want and don't have to pay the consquenses that they would have to if the huge muscley guy they just called an idiot (using clean language here, we all know how mean people can be on the web) was standing right in front of them. So it's the anymosity and lack of consequences that is the driving factor behind technology addiction.

 

Most of the things that people use are entirely for communicating with other people - Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, online forums, texting, etc. are entirely about talking to others.

So the problem isn't that people aren't communicating. The problem is that technology has made it very easy to talk to a very particular group of people, meaning that more 'general' communication with those around you sometimes gets ignored. Whether this is on the whole a bad or good thing I think depends on the person - obviously it is great in some situations (isolated queer people having access to this community for example).

 

We are obsessed, yeah... I mean, we can do anything on the internet, we can talk, we can study, we can research when you have doubt, so... yeah. In my opinion it's really good. It's easy and we can do whateverrrr here. And I'm really greatful, because that's the only way I can talk to the girl I love, and she is miles away, so... yeahhhh.

 

Maybe. But it keeps in touch with with my wonderful, special, girlfriend, and that's all that matters to me right now.

 

Yeah it has, but at least it provides some form of communication for some people. It's good in that it lets us perform more efficiently and expand/condense who we communicate with. I find though it makes harder to talk to people since they are either absorbed in their devices or don't find you worth talking to when they can find others like themselves online.

It's kind of a double-edged sword, really good but also really bad.

 

I grew up in the 70's and mid 80's and I can tell you the world changed when the PC was launched in 1981. It took till about 1988 before they were everywhere. Cars had them, offices, everywhere it seemed. In 1980 a movie 9 to 5 came out and if you watch it it is how a office looked before computers. that was 1 year before the IBM pc came out. Now we had a mobil phone in all my parents cars back then. They had a rotery dial that you did not use. And looked like a house desk phone. You picked the reciever up and told the operator what number you wanted. only the rich had them. then in the early 1980's the first suitcase phones came out. I had my first cell phone in 1988 when I was 16 and started driving and it was the size of a shaving bag. Clunky to carry around. In my house my phones are from the 40's, my husband says they are Norman Bated phones. You know off the Psyco movies. The old clunky black and chrome phones as he says. My first house had them in it and I took them with me and like talking on them best. My best friend who is 32 can't get the rotery dial to dial a number right. I have to do it for him. I do miss thoes days and yes Americans were proud to be American back then. I can tell you flag day every house would have Old Glory up, and National hollidays too. It was so neat to walk through the neighborhood and see all the red white and blue. Also everyone drove a Ford or Chevrolet it seemed. My parents had a big Mercury stationwagon for the family always which we drove in rarely and British cars for riding. We had this one huge Jag with the deepest shag carpet and a full bar and tray tables that came out of the back of the seat. It was my favorite to ride in. Life seemed so much simpler back then to me. I am so happy living now with Mike and would not trade him for anything. Watch some of the movies from the 70's and 80's and you can see. I suggest 9 to 5 to start. June

 

If people are so consumed with their portable devices that they aren't engaging in normal face-to-face conversation, that's their loss. I say this as someone who's frequently glued to a screen of some kind when I'm killing time on my own, but if someone I know comes up and talks to me, I put it down in a heartbeat.

 

It depends on how you define "technology". If you look at technology in the sense that we have been making technological advances since the advent of man, then we have always and will always be obsessed with technology. Modern electronic devices are just one more facet of that.

 

It's the laziness that we have. It's not really technology, per say. I think technology created it but we've definitely added to it. Or, it wasn't meant to create this problem. In the 60's (I think) Walter Cronkite did a CBS piece on the home of the future. There's a lot of things we have, like a computer that tells us the weather. We have info quides on our TV. I think, though, that people then looked at it as a way to get more done. However, it's now a way for us to sedentary - anyone agree?

 

but... fire and wheels are awesome lol

 

I think technology is sliding a little. I mean new OSes like windows 8 (not a fan in general but) where you can actually develop on a tablet are nice, but it's still nothing compared to developing on a laptop or desktop. But most things, tablets and smartphones, are way underpowered. You've gotta basically break or "root" the things to do anything worthwhile. Worse you've got autocomplete and text-to-speech which reduces the number of symbols you can put out quickly to just letters and numbers. Like right now I'm typing on a keyboard, and I could solve so many problems so much more quickly like this. If I tried to program with text to speech my phone would be in itty bitty pieces, half buried in a wall and half on the floor, before too long. And my neighbors probably wouldn't appreciate me screaming in rage.

But I mean in general, we used to be able to do so so much more for ourselves. I mean with your car for instance. People in my parents generation had beetles that didn't even have coolant in them. Anything broke in that car, you could fix it in your driveway, no special parts, no reading the car's computer for a diagnostic, and you could replace parts with nickels and dimes. A lot of those beetles are still running.

I'm trying really hard not to rant and I'm taking forever to get to what I'm trying to say. But I mean it's everywhere. I'm real DIY and that sucks, because being that way becomes less and less of an option every year, and the alternatives suck so much more than what I could do myself with an hour or two. At least I can still cook from scratch and sew. And some stuff's better, like those little Raspberry Pi dealies are awesome for hobbyists. But in general most people wanna be able to buy something and have it work out of the box, and I'm not most people, so.

I think it's always been like that. Just it sucks... it's like that Tom Petty song, "The boys upstairs just wanna see how much you'll pay for what you used to get for free". That's where I think technology is going, me rebuying all my movies a dozen times in a dozen formats before streaming them, me paying Apple to write programs for them, grrrrr!

Sorry rant done. Just, simpler isn't always better. Sometimes power and options are cool too you know? But simpler is the only direction technology goes any more.