A life of the Senses - Research Paper Example

A life of the Senses Throughout history, technology has had indelible impact on the lives of the people and through it; several changes in the way we do things have been realized. For instance, communication has been made possible such that we are able to communicate to those in far-flung areas without necessarily transiting to those places. Away from communication, technology has also enable us to produce goods in a more efficient and faster rate than before, with the increase in the world population, there is high demand for the products, without technology, it would be difficult to satisfy the requirement of the all people without an efficient mechanism through which production can be hastened. It is also important to note that technology has also enabled us acquire knowledge with ease, for instance, the use of Google enables us to get information at the click of the button (Goodbody 56). These are the benefits that technology as brought to our doorsteps to make life bearable and possible for us, to enable us run errands with ease and communicate issues in a timely manner. Notwithstanding, whereas there are technological advancement that has made our lives easier, there are also some bad effect that technology has brought to us, it is not that advantageous per se. For instance, in his book A life of the Senses, Richard Louv categorically proposed that Google is making us not enjoy nature in the sense that it has created a culture that do not appreciate the value of reading. Most of the people today cannot sustain reading hard copy academic materials for just one hour. This is attributed to the technological advancement that has brought Google, through this mode of getting information, it has been realized that the culture of reading has been fading with time and most of the people no longer considers reading books to be a way of sourcing information. In this doing, to find student reading hard copy materials has become rare, as most of the youths prefer technology to enable them get information in a click of a button. The natural reading environment has been pushed to the periphery and no more book are there to read (Goodbody 66). In the contemporary United States, young people have been so engraved in the technology that they have been deflected from getting in touch with nature. The technological advancements experienced in the US are rapidly depriving the young people from enjoying the provision of nature since most of the things they are doing are technology based. There is a strong fear that teenagers in the United States soon will be completely be disconnected from nature if they continue to rely on technology as they do today. In this paper, I have examined the different ways in which technology is affecting the extent through which young people should enjoy nature (Negrotti 43). Overreliance on technological provisions is making the young people to miss associating with nature and there is need that they balance their relation between nature and technology. Young people in the US have been deprived nature in the following ways through their skewed interest in the technology used. Using technology, most of the natural things have been enabled in the technology through animations, young people then use this animated or simulated programs to satisfy their quest for the natural system. The use of technology has thus made the youths to lose a lot of natural real time experience of the world by engaging in technology. Take for example tourism, before the onset of technology, there was need for tourism activities where people would go out to have fun in the natural environment, to appreciate the diversity of flora and fauna but with the onset of technology, young people have grown lazier and have no time to visit even parks to see wild animals. Instead, they opt for the movie series to enjoy the natural world as captured and availed in the movies. There are several computer games that has made it possible for the young people to be assimilated in the computer excursion at the expense of the physical one, through computes, one is able to play football, hike mountains, and compete in safari rally (Szerszynski 21). The availability of these provision have made the youths to ignore the physical activities that would enable they enjoy real nature like hiking mountains, going for the safari rally competition, and visiting parks and animal farms. Take for example life in Hawaii; it is one of the best places that one can be to see the kind of beauty that is offered by nature, most people have acknowledge that it is one of the most scenic place one can be in this planet. It is true that one should dedicate part of his time to be there at least once in a lifetime. The beauty and the serene environment that is offered by the sandy beaches in the North shore beach provides one of the most appropriate moments to appreciate nature and get to relax the mind and disconnect from the daily routine. At the same time, such natural places make one to have the good feeling of life; it makes one to be highly refreshed by nature. Unfortunately, most of the youths are not having this experience because of technology. The coming of iphones, ipads and, tablets has made the youths to lead a kind of a sedentary life that they do not mind the beautiful natural sceneries in places like Hawaii. Most parents are worried to day that even when they take their children for recreation, they do not positively involve, and most of them are engraved in their laptops, ipads, and iphones (Szerszynski 22). They pay much attention to the technology that on wonders when they first had the technology products, this is particularly surprising because they spend most of the time with the technology that one would expect them to do otherwise during recreation times. Instead of basking in the sandy beaches like everyone else, the youths are engaged in there technology that they hardly blink an eye. It is surprising that technology is making the youths to lead a sedentary life allowing them to grow lazier, stupid, and obese. It is even exaggerated that the youths will soon want flying chairs that would enable them access drinks fro the fridge without making it there physically. Technology in this case has missed its purpose of making the youths be more creative and able to learn and instead has made them to miss on some of the things that matters the most-nature and what it contains (Michael 51). The technology part of the world has transformed the way youths conduct themselves socially and the way they get entertained. Whereas most of the entertainments before the onset of technology were nature based, today, youths have changed the way they enjoy, socialize, and entertain themselves while nature is ignored. This is why Richard, in his life of the senses posed that youths are missing nature because of technology. It is not only in terms of the physical nature that technology has deprived the youths ability to enjoys the provision of nature. In the US, it if not strange to find youths who are disappointed because of one reason of the other calling their parents and discussing with them issues over the phone rather than opting for the physical solution to the problems. The youths have got use to the tendency of avoiding parents to chat with them over issues. In some cases, they post their problems in to the social media such as twitter ad facebook for the public domain to read and give them feedbacks (Michael 71). By doing this, they hope to get solution from the people who in most cases do not mind the problems of those who do the postings. This a way too through which technology has succeeded in depriving the youths the opportunity to interact with nature. Youths hardly spend time with their parents, they do not have time to talk over issues with their parents so that they can get guidance and direction, technology has taken them from the setting of what a family should constitute as naturally provided. My experience of the Natural World In most cases, people do not take initiative to explore what the world provides in its natural sense, people are engaged in their daily life chores a situation that make people believe that the world is all about the work they do. It is very rare to find people moving from one place to the other because of economic demands, this has made people to change their life program and miss out the most important opportunities outside there that will make them aware of the diverse natural phenomenon. For some quite some period, I felt had a limited knowledge on what the world is until I went for a picnic in one of the sites in the countryside. In the picnic, I found a number of natural things, plants, and animals in equal measure and this changed my perception on what the world is all about. Following my visit to the sites, I had the opportunity to see several animals in the zoo, and diverse forms of plants through out the picnic period. I have to wonder about the content of the world; the different type of the animals that live in different parts of the world enables one to have a wider knowledge and appreciation of nature. From that period, I believed then that different parts of the world are endowed with different types of flora and fauna that one only come to notice them when they attempt to explore. I realized that the world is a complex place with many things involved in it, some within our knowledge others outside our knowledge until we come a cross them. It then takes one considerable efforts to explore the contents of what the world offers. People should thus inculcate in them the need to explore nature in order to understand it instead of engaging in the technological issues that have deprived them time to appreciate and enjoy nature. There is a lot that can be learnt from what nature provides for us besides the normal aesthetic and beauty that it is known for. The youths today needs to be encouraged that it is not only in technology that one can spend his/her time productively during leisure, the natural environment also provides a rich provision of educative, informative, and entertaining feature that one should dedicate time to explore and know more about. Work Cited Goodbody, Axel. Nature, technology and cultural change in twentieth-century German literature: the challenge of ecocriticism. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. Print. Michael, Mike. Reconnecting culture, technology and nature from society to heterogeneity. London: Routledge, 2010. Print. Negrotti, Massimo. The reality of the artificial nature, technology and naturoids. Berlin: Springer, 2012. Print. Szerszynski, Bronislaw. Nature, technology, and the sacred. Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub., 2005. Print. Read More