Happily Stupid and Lonely Ever After - Essay Example

Happily Stupid and Lonely Ever After Introduction The last few decades have seen technology advance by leaps and bounds thereby introducing high benefits to numerous academic fields and their application in the industry. The benefits of technology are evident in healthcare, education, communication, and business amongst other areas. In business for instance, information technology has seen a tremendous decrease in production costs and universal collaborations and partnerships. In communication, information transfer speed has become instantaneous while talking is done from anywhere. However, introduction of technology in human lives is not without its own disadvantages. The coupling of technology with social lives has resulted to a narrative with a stupid and lonely life ever after, ending. This is truly expressed in the works of numerous experts whose focus is in revealing the negative outcomes associated with technology. The works of these experts are Ray Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451”; Samuel Cohen’s “50 Essays: A Portable Anthology (Is Google Making us Stupid); and Mache’s “Is Facebook Making Us Lonely?” According to Marche (n.p) loneliness is promoted through modern day social media culture. Instead building and maintaining physical friendships, social media culture has promoted friendships founded on isolation and loneliness. Additionally, Bradbury reveals that allowing technology to replace all aspects of life will result to loss of intelligence. In his futuristic society, Bradbury reveals that the society is getting rid of common sense intelligence to submit to ignorance. However, for the curious and anxious persons like Montag manages to see the beneficial side of not embracing ignorance but working with intelligence. Furthermore, from Cohen search engines have led to dramatic promotion of stupidity as people’s mind lose concentration and long for fast information to solve problems. Although there are tremendous benefits from technological advances, Ray Bradbury correctly predicted that technology would also have negative impact on human physical, intellectual and emotional health as if made evident by many experts today. Intellectually, technology is responsible for the continued experiences loss of intelligence. Based on the arguments by Bradbury, technology benefits are countered by the associated impact of loss of intellect and lose of contact with ordinary and important aspects of life. For instance, Montag could not remember being familiar with there being dew on grass in the morning “He suddenly could not remember if he had known it or not…” (p.4). Additionally, being a fireman together with his colleagues, Montag gets used to the task of starting instead of putting off fire. It’s amazing that the firemen forget their responsibility suddenly. In this society, the culture of reading books is banned and the firemen are required to burn any book whenever it is discovered without any regrets. Books are banned for being problematic, contradicting and confusing. Consequently, technology replaces any other source of information as people are expected to depend on television as the sources of information. For instance, people no longer have time to discuss important family matters as they are engrossed in TV and other responsibilities. “I wanted to talk to you” he paused, “You took all the pills in your bottle last night” “Oh, I would not do that” she replied surprised (9). Instead, Montag’s wife focuses on following television scripts other than holding crucial discussions about her health condition. Furthermore, technological advances in this society have seen changes in job descriptions as anyone can do almost everything. When Montag’s wife overdoses, he calls for medics only to be visited by plumbers. Additionally, Montag also destroys homes where books are hidden together with owners who resist having their books confiscated. However, during his job, Montag recognizes that “There must be something in books, things we cant imagine, to make a woman stay in a burning house… (Bradbury 24)” Like the society in Bradbury’s book, Carr reveals that the society with Google is gradually developing stupid people who spend more time online surfing and searching or even adding content to online database online. This has resulted to inevitable changes in people’s mind yet it is not easy for victims to figure them out easily. Consequently, Google in the society has resulted to dependent persons who only want fast and definite answers to solve their solutions. The result is that the minds of people in Google era cannot concentrate for more than a three or so pages article and this means that it is impossible to engage in deep reading like that needed to read a book. Prior to the invention of Google according to Cohen, people got caught up in lengthy narratives and articles without concentration drift unlike “…spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose” (p.23). Deep reading used to come naturally and not after a long more often unsuccessful struggle. However, it is important to appreciate that with Google, a few searches coupled with swift ticks on hyperlinks one has a wide pool of information from which relevant information can easily be sieved for its purpose. The advantage of internet is that the “Net is becoming a universal medium…” (p.24) and information flows through the eyes and ears to get into the mind. Unlike the days prior to Google, information was available in bits however, one has immediate access to enormous information and this has led to defragmentation of the mind hence affecting people’s emotional health. Finally, social element of life has been replaced by Facebook’s isolation and loneliness culture. Technology in Facebook is attributed to making people “…receive more attention in death than in her final years of life” (n.p). Although technology has introduced tremendous changes in the speed of information relay, the users of such technologies are at risk of unparalleled estrangement. For instance, Yvette Vickers died without anyone noticing it despite being a renowned actress. Despite the numerous modes of socializing from Twitter, Facebook and others, people are getting lonelier. In Facebook for instance, people remain transfixed on the screen “hungering for response” (n.p) as they invite friends and keep waiting for them to accept friendship. This is a clear indication that peoples’ lives within the social media world stay super linked in loneliness. With Facebook, the fact is that there is interference with our real friendships which instead of bringing us together is distancing us from each other hence causing more loneliness through the spread of isolation. Marche highlights that with loneliness results to higher risks of early placement in Geriatric homes, less exercise, obesity and risk of memory loss and inflammation (n.p). Conclusion Technological advance is responsible for supersonic communication speeds where people need to click a button to have information transferred to people located in various world locations. However, technology is also responsible for the recent raising cases of loneliness especially facebook; loss of intelligence as people let technology led their lives; and promotion of stupidity through Google and other search engines. From the study, technology is a good tool for making our lives easy but people need to understand that technology cannot offer what we need without any effort from us. We need to learn how to control technology to manage our lives. Works Cited Bradbury, Ray. Fahrenheit 451. Amazon: Simon and Schuster, 2013. Cohen, Samuel, S,. 50 essays: a portable anthology. Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 2011. Marche, Stephen. Is Facebook Making Us Lonely? May 2012. Read More