The advancements in technology have changed many aspects of our culture. Some people believe, "But technology itself is neutral. It's a tool, neither good nor evil. " (Times). Other people believe that there are good effects and negative effects to technology. I agree that technology is neutral, and is a tool. And technically is not "good" nor evil. BUT there are definently two sides to the effects of technology. One mentioned by Huxley, "Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us." (Postman). To a certain extent I do agree that what we love; social media, TV's, computers, etc. will probably ruin us. As some say it is already starting to ruin us.
Times Magazine has a different perspective of the quickly changing culture then what you would think. Times Magazine states, "There's a lesson in that for all of us in the media, for we must adapt to new technology, and not simply by putting the same old wine in new bottles. We need to adapt by creating our content in a way that is organic to those new mediums." They believe that things like Twitter and Facebook are a gateway to a new form of communication. Communication evolves, it changes throughout the years, with every advancement in technology, we change how we connect. Think about it... the telephone (we can call, text, even video chat) and the internet (e-mails, Facebook, Twitter, etc.).
But social media is not the only way technology has changed our culture. Technology has improved how we as humans live. As Buzzle says, "It is almost impossible to enlist all the positive effects of technology on society. The fast-advancing technology on the whole, has given impetus to developments in various fields and improved the quality of human life. There's less risk, less effort, less mess. There's more leisure, more ease and more speed - all because of that ten-letter word - not a word, a phenomenon - technology." There are literally so many good things that have come with technology. The ones that come to mind for me are medical technologies. We have been able to save more peoples lives with technology in the field of medicine. For example the pacemaker; this device is placed on someones heart who cannot start itself. Without the pacemaker many people who suffer heart diseases would die.
On the other hand having advancements in technology causes some problems. Info Tech states that technology causes 5 main problems: depletion of natural resources, pollution, extinction, health, massive destruction. Most people do not care for the effects of their technology, because they believe that they are better than the environment, or animals/plants. But to be honest those people couldn't be more wrong. We live with the animals and plants, we are all equal, not one species is above another. Well, that's what I believe anyway. And I believe that people should care more about what is going on around them instead of worrying about their battery dying on their "precious" iPhone. People can be so ignorant.
So yes, I definitely agree with Postman. We will amuse ourselves to death because with our technology comes huge negative effects that will most likely be our demise. Maybe not to the extent of what Huxley proposed, but what kills the humans will probably be what we love. And right now what we love is our technologies.
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Media Literacy is the ability to access, analyze, evaluate and create media in a variety of forms.
I would consider myself to be media literate, because I can access, and create many forms of media. I have a Facebook, a Twitter. I use Pandora and Youtube all the time. Google as my mom says is your BEST FRIEND. I wouldn't call myself tech savy, but I at least no how to work my way around many things found on the computers about media.
Work Cited
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1902836,00.html
http://www.buzzle.com/articles/positive-effects-of-technology-on-society.html
http://importanceoftech.com/negative-effects-of-technology-on-our-lives
http://www.medialit.org/media-literacy-definition-and-more
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