Have you heard the rumors? Fifty years from now, we will be fat, anti-social computer addicts. Ignore the gossip. Machines will not take over the world. Continue to use your gadgetry.
In fact, I grow mildly irritated when people tell me we’ve become too dependent on computers. Did their ancestors refuse to use fire?
In fact, skeptics probably existed during the dawn of fire screaming, “We shall freeze to death instead of use this new fire!” Fire can burn us, and computers can distract us, only if we let them.
Today, the simplest activities require computers. Need to warm food? There’s a computer chip in your microwave. The dirty clothes that lie on your floor must be cleaned sometime. Let’s see if your washing machine will function without a computer inside it. We use computers in nearly every area of our lives.
If anything, we don’t appreciate computers enough. People today seem to think computers have created a death in culture. As technology pervades society, it’s as if overnight we’ll no longer have friends or be able to think independently.
I spend six to eight hours a day on a computer. The majority of this time is spent doing school work and communicating information. Multitasking still exists. Half the time I spend on computers is simultaneously spent around others. Cell phones, laptops and iPods don’t isolate us from society – they make life a little more tolerable and a bit less complicated.
Computers connect us to the rest of the world, not the other way around. We are social creatures by nature. Computers may change the way we communicate and interact with people, but they cannot take away who we are. We like being around one another.
Computers allow us to build bigger, better things. The human mind will not slowly deteriorate as computers become more perceptive, responsive and complex. Instead, they will lend us tools to our advantage.
People are glorified for doing things the old-fashioned way. In a class last year, an instructor told us of a man who built his million dollar business without using a cell phone and continues to refuse technology. Apparently, this was to motivate the class to not be so dependent on computers.
That was perhaps the silliest piece of advice I’d heard in years. Those that survive, adapt.
“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change,” Darwin said years ago. Any outlier is an exception, not the rule.
Is your computer telling you not to exercise? Has your cell phone stranded you on an island with no human contact? You elect to stay indoors on a computer foregoing face-to-face social interaction. Claiming technology makes us lethargic is equivalent to saying money makes us greedy. If you wish it, it will happen, but do not blame computers for your lackluster activity levels.
We have not become too dependent on computers. I do not foresee a worldwide power outage or network failure in the immediate future. Machines will not take over the world. Continue to use your gadgetry.
Tarif Haque is a sophomore majoring in computer science. His column runs biweekly on Thursdays.
