Introduction
Technology growth in the recent time has been so high for the extent that it has begun to challenge the natural reasoning of people. Sherry Turkle, who was once a recommendable enthusiast of technology and technological process, have of late expressed some of her immense doubts on the direction taken by technology. Through a bench discussion at the TED, Sherry acknowledged that the direction taken by technology is questionable. This should not only be taken to the positive but the negative side of technological involvement in our lives that becomes doubtful. Sherry argues that as much as people have intended to use technology as a tool of improving our lives, it now given a show of negatively influencing our lives. This paper therefore, intends to examine the various negative ways through which technology is currently influencing our lives.
Discussion
Sherry argues that people’s use of technological devices is too high. This includes that use of networks, internet that are perceived to be in the inclusion of human improve lives. Sherry’s biggest concern in this talk was that human roles have been ignored. People would rather refer to using technology even to the simplest of all functions and ignore the human participation. Even though scientists have become so smart to the extent of eased human life, certain roles should purely remain human roles in exception of use of achiness and technology. Sherry relates this to the highly growing cyber world that has all over suddenly made the world a small village of rapid human-technology interaction. Sherry criticizes the cyber world as killing the human morale to work.
There equally exist technology-human role exchanges that greatly exist in communication as depicted by Sherry. This is greatly linked to human parental responsibilities. Sherry acknowledges that people must in one way, or another get committed into job to secure income as a source of their spending. Nevertheless, this game of ignoring pure human roles such as parental care should never be the case. For instance, a video games and e-mails have been used to distribute parental care to technology. Some parents find themselves too busy due to the nature of jobs that they do.
These parents often easily remit to the up risen e-communication (Turkle 46). Apparent even admitted to being using email texts to communicate to her children. Sherry says that as a mother, she totally has no time to be regularly visiting her children. The only way at hand to arrest the situation is to keep a regular communication with the children through e-mail and text. Sherry called this a situational condition that to some extent can be understandable. The irony in it was that, a parent forsaking her duty in the name being a family breadwinner was just in total sums zero comparatively to others.
On the other side of the story this manner of parenting going against the obvious ethics and morals of the society. Firstly, because it ignored the obvious responsibility bestowed upon the parents. A good parent should have maximum time with the children. This would help them have time to mentor their children. It is equally very recommendable that a child is given maximum parental care and love. Children often grow to the style and way of life of their parents. This is the adverse effect of technology of human relationship where parents abscond their duties to match it with technological communication channels.
Sherry theorizes that our experience with the computers and as well as an online experience imposes big threat to our cultural values and ethics. This challenges our tradition values of identity. The way people think has greatly been influenced by the internet that links millions of people across the globe. Traditional communication gave room for face to face communication that ensured were more realistic in their speech and gave a sense of reality as it was almost impossible for one to tell of something that is not true. On the other hand, internet and communication have given room for the possible anomalies in communication.
Its invisibility concept even makes it also huge because it is difficult to recognize if it is the right person making the conversation. The users of online communication have a chance to portray and makeup any identity of they’re own (Turkle 65). Sherry Turkle argues that the Multi-User Domains or the online role player games usually find out that even though they can play selves of their own, at the end of the day none of this characters they ever played is their own or in any what related to them. This is also a very actual scenario that occurs in practical real situation of life, one’s real self can never be what he or she can ever act to be.
Therefore, Sherry identified Multi-User Domains as that boundary that exists between a person’s on real self and the characters that he assumes or acts to be. Sherry argued that an identity can be realized in terms of non-rigidity, flexibility of oneself and regularity in life. The computer and online interactions thereby give a conducive environment to model, test and change one’s identity.
According to Turk, the designers and programmers of the computer user interface contribute entirely to the aspect of identity formation because of the complexity and flexibility aspect of it. This is so because whenever a new user interface is developed it is given a customary relation or customer friendly software. Its these friendly software that mandate the behavior of its users and thereby giving only options that are only within the system soft board.
The concept of identity and self in the earlier periods possible undermined the concept of identity being found in modernity. The modernists believe that behind every concept, there exist truths about it. On the contrary to modernists, pre-modernists believe that it will be more beneficial to search the truth from continues changes in the surface rather than embarking ourselves on the shifting truth and in search for origin.
Challenges Ahead
Sherry Turkle was directly concerned on the relevance of how the computers and online services were directly affecting the sense of identity of people (Turkle 112). Sherry argues that our persistent use of computers and the online would create certain impacts in peolpe that would make us a bit different from how we were before. This shows that people due to increase in use of the technology slide away from their original palace to what is actual new of us. A close assessment reveals that everyone after a durational use of the technology makes away step from his or her own self.
Culture of Simulation
Sherry Turkle believed that every element of culture simulation had its own story of its own. Turkle recognizes that just as if other factors causing change or affecting it in any way, culture also does change people. There exist moments when people we technology totally walks people out of their own culture. This is a culture of self-belief where once starts to question who they are. While experience obtained from an online system provides the user with relevant opportunity to examine and identify in the social aspect of life, it also provides a good platform for interaction.
Multiplicity
This is the concept that is held to the quantitative increase in people. There is a direct link between multiplicity and the technology. Technology leads to expansion of production as well growth in user total sum of consumption and use of computers. In our case, multiplicity is derived from double use in technology and the corresponding double exit from reaction roles and duties. Just as in the case of opening up varied chances for leisure and consumption increases in communication, media have given an ideal of ways of understanding ourselves best (Turkle 167). Through getting access to, for instances, history programs about life in earlier times of pre-modernization, soap operas with evil twins, or perhaps channels specifically for extreme sports and games, youths grow up in a world in which they have seen it all the way of their lives.
Therefore, the globalization situation offered all possible forms of technological communication required to steer up rise of stories and forms of knowledge that can inform young people’s identity management. Relevant to this, it is not considered to be built from pre-formed essences that exist independently outside of time, mention of other social activity, but are constantly regenerated in interaction, built from the range of subject ranks available to personal that can be contradictory to the ethical base of the technological arguments.
Conclusion
Turtle’s argument gave a number of factors and reasons as to why technology in one way was affecting the identity of individuals and community. In general, Sherry was trying to explain the contradictory impacts that were brought about by technology. Initially, technology was to impact in people and societies, more so positive change but with time, the course of technology change as people began to get the reverse of the case. Technology began being shortchanged with individual human roles. This was the cause of the earlier supporters of technology as Sherry Turkle to begin questioning the existing intension of technology in our society.
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