Technology… is a queer thing. It brings you great gifts with one hand, and it stabs you in the back with the other. ~C.P. Snow, New York Times, 15 March 1971
This quote spoke to me because I think that C.P. Snow articulates how technology can diminish the quality of life just as much as it can add to it. C.P. Snow also personifies technology, which I think is important to this quote because of how heavily technology is intertwined with humanity.
Cell phones are one of the biggest examples in my life of the give and take of technology. I cannot imagine my life without a cell phone and I’m sure most people my age would agree with this. Cell phones allow for constant communication, information and directions. It allows parents to always be with their children, sometimes even though tracking apps. It allows friends to constantly be available and can make thousands of miles feel like no distance at all.
This form of communication seems to be all positive, however this is where technology “brings you great gifts with one hand, and it stabs you in the back with the other.” This constant communication also allows traditional work hours to trickle into personal or family time. It infringes on sleep time and sleep quality. By allowing constant communication it can pull people away from the present and into their phones to a place where they are not physically present. This is most problematic with younger children who are growing up lacking the social skills to sit through a dinner without looking at their phones or unable to have important conversations with their parents without feeling that they are missing something very important on their phones.
Knowledge is power and with a smartphone, power is at your fingertips. One of the biggest complaints against the younger generation is our need for instant gratification. We do not like to wait for what we want. I believe that this need for instant gratification comes from cell phones and how easily information can be accessed on them. When my parents’ generation, the baby boomers, were kids, they had to ponder answers to questions or go to the library and look in encyclopedias to find out what they did not know. The gratification was far from instant. Now there is no need to wait, there is no crossword question that goes unanswered, no recipe that cannot be looked up and no riddle that cannot be solved in a matter of seconds and at any location. While this knowledge is a powerful tool, it also has taken away patience and the ability to search and filter through other knowledge to find what is being looked for.
Map apps on phones seems like a fairly harmless and helpful feature. This feature has made paper maps extinct and with that people’s ability to get around if there is poor phone service and the directions will not load. This has happened to me a few times, leaving me driving around aimlessly until I find service, fully dependent on the Maps application. For some, the dependency on the app goes so far that in 2015 one man in Indiana, drove off of a disused bridge that has been closed since 2009. This man and his wife were so focused on the GPS that they both ignored the numerous warning signs and barricades informing them that it was closed. His car flew off the bridge plunging 37 feet to the ground and his wife was killed in the accident. The man survived the accident and the police investigator said, “the driver had been too focused on his GPS navigation system to look where he was going.” This is a scary and real example of how a strong dependence on technology and a lack of common sense and spacial awareness can be deadly.