English
Introduction
For the past couple decades our society has been actively experiencing a technological boom that has been making our everyday life easier by assisting us at work, saving our lives, helping to connect with another people. But very little of us have actually thought of a life without these technological advances. And even fewer of us do actually understand that technology made addicts out of us, just as bad as any other types of addicts or maybe even worse (now I am not referring to such technology as automobiles, planes, machinery, or useful gadgets, but more to things like internet, smartphones, tablets, social networks, etc.). Of course, a lot of critics would now say that such statements are just absurd, and maybe even insane; would say that our present society is technologically driven, and would seize to exist, if, suddenly, all of the technology would disappear; the worst part of it is that this opinion is absolutely correct. Most of the humanity relies on technology, even more - it is totally dependent on technology. What would people actually do, if, say, one day facebook disappeared, or e-mail service disappeared, or sell phone disappeared (and that is without even taking out electricity, cars, planes, machinery, basic gadgets that help us around the house all the time, PC, whole internet)? The answer is half of humanity would die out, before falling into dark medieval times.
Well, there is no doubt in the fact that we benefit greatly from the technological development, but unfortunately not all of the inventions are beneficial for us. Let’s take the internet web for instance. Yes it is incredibly helpful in every way possible, and the usefulness of it can be hardly overestimated, but is it actually that great? Many people consider it to be an evil invention that takes our time, our minds, basically our lives away from us (even though there are people that try to live without it, it proves practically impossible to spend a single day without actually using it). Moreover, internet, and all of its further creations (e-mail, social networks) successfully destroy simple pleasures of our lives; more and more people start to prefer digital communication to the live one, digital studying to beautiful libraries, digital shopping to the time spent in the groceries or walking through the markets, even digital dating and digital sex to the real pleasures of physical relations between humans.
All of these facts are tragic, as technology is taking away from us the wonder of not knowing, the wonder of waiting for a response letter from the beloved ones, the wonder of studying, searching, and exploring things of interest without doing it in a press of a button. I am deeply sorry for this thought, but even the warfare is not anymore the art of tactics, brilliance of minds, courage of men, when the whole planet, as we know it, can be destroyed in the matter of a minute with a push of a single button.
Conclusion
That is the legacy that technology leaves us with, a society of zombies that is absolutely dependant on technology. If we do not consider this situation now, eventually our life will become the same with the life of characters from a movie “Surrogates”, in which simple, everyday operations, and even interaction between people is done by manlike robots. The next logical question is why technology would even need us.
Works Cited
Sirota, David. "Life without Technology: Getting off the Grid." The Seattle Times [Seattle] 29 June 2009. Web. 23 Oct. 2013. <http://seattletimes.com/html/opinion/2009396165_sirota29.html>.
Stusser, Michael A. "What Would Life Be Like Without Technology? A Onetime Addict Finds Out." Phoenix New Times News [Phoenix] 15 Nov. 2012. Web. 23 Oct. 2013. <http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/2012-11-15/news/what-would-life-be-like-without-technology-a-onetime-addict-finds-out/>.
