The Use of Industrial and Technological Advancements - Essay Example

For this particular assignment, I am being asked to analyze the progress that our society has managed to achieve through the use of industrial and technological advancements. I was very excited to write about this topic, but then I realized that before I could actually discuss it, I first needed to explain what I believe the word “Progress” means. The dictionary defines progress in relation to our reading material as follows: the development of an individual or society in a direction considered more beneficial than and superior to the previous level” (dictonary.com). Keeping that definition in mind, I thought it best to start off this essay by discussing Kirkpatrick Sale’s essay “Five Facets of Myth”. In the essay, Mr. Sale discusses the way that each generation views progress and how it actually affects the lives of the people participating in that particular era of life.
It was really a very nice coincidence to be able to compare the aforementioned essay with “What's the Matter With Kids Today” by Amy Goldwasser. Both essays use a comparison of youth versus age in a uniquely engrossing manner. Both essays depict the different generations as being so similar yet so different in a way. While Mr. Sale uses cars as part of the analogy of his essay, Ms. Goldwasser uses the internet as the point of comparison between ages instead.
In Mr. Sale’s essay, he speaks from the point of view of a 15-year-old who is defending the progress that his generation has come to enjoy. In this instance, his generation was enjoying the speed that cars had over its predecessor models that his father grew up on. His father presented him with a very interesting question when he asked him: “And what has been the result of having all these wonderful new sleek and efficient and speedy cars?” (Sale “Five Facets of a Myth”). The silence with which he met his father’s questions proved that the youth have a tendency to speak without thinking; thus, allowing them to make claims that they cannot back up with proper and factual support. This act on the part of the young author explains why progress is difficult for the older generation to accept. How can they accept something that even those who are supposed to be adept with its progressive benefits cannot mention even one? Mr. Sale further informs his readers that his father proceeded to ask him a slew of progress questions after that one. Questions such as: “How many people die each year as a result of these speedy cars, how many are maimed and crippled? What is life like for the people who produce them, on those famous assembly lines, the same routinized job hour after hour, day after day, like Chaplin's film? How many fields and forests and even towns and villages have been paved over so that these cars can get to all the places they want to get to -- and park there? Where does all the gasoline come from, and at what cost, and what happens when we burn it and exhaust it?” (Sale, Kirkpatrick “Five Facets of a Myth”) It then becomes very obvious to the reader that Mr. Sale's father was a pioneer environmentalist of his time. Even later on in his life, he tried to protect the environment by influencing his son to consider the consequences of his progress-related actions on the planet. Just like generations before him, the senior Mr. Sale believed that the younger generation was growing up stupid and without a care in the world, especially about the planet they live in. But what if it was actually the other way around? Maybe the father was only afraid because the cars gave the users more independence than ever before and allowed a whole new generation of Americans to create a totally new lifestyle far removed from the lifestyle that their parents knew and understood.
On the other hand, Ms. Goldwasser takes he hat off to the kind of progress that the internet has offered young children. She explains that the older generation is simply afraid of progress that they cannot understand. In her own words, she said that; “Or is it the older generation that the Internet has seduced — into the inanities of leveling charges based on fear, ignorance and old-media, multiple-choice testing? So much so that we can’t see that the Internet is only a means of communication, and one that has created a generation, perhaps the first, of writers, activists, storytellers?” (Goldwasser “What's the Matter With Kids Today?”). After all, people tend to fear things that they do not understand and in this case, the elderly who cannot run modern technologies, be it fast cars or computers will find themselves quite afraid of the changes happening around them. It is the generation that rejects progress that creates enemies out of things that they should simply try to understand and adjust to. Read More