by Hey Siri, What is STS?
How many times a day do we use our phones to look up anything? From “How to get a stain out of my clothes?” To “Do I have Coronavirus?”
Our daily lives have been thought to be more convenient with the accompaniment of technology. Although humans have become knowledgeable of the physical world around us, we forget that the answers we receive from Google, Siri, online newspapers, and many more need to be thought about critically. In the rise of technology and science in society, we must remember to continue questioning the answers which emerge in order to avoid blind acceptance.
In our current day, people can often accept information blindly. When it comes to the internet, the first answer is probably the only one we see. This acceptance is the modern tendency. Instead we should be thinking through our problems on our own rather than taking the easy route, most often the technological route. The quote below embodies the moment when the technological route becomes too ingrained in our lives and we lose our ability to think on our own, allowing the default search engine to think for us.
“I like my new telephone, my computer works just fine, my calculator is perfect, but Lord, I miss my mind!” ~Author Unknown
A phone, a computer and a calculator. These three items together make me immediately think about being a student. They are thought to be essential to learning and functioning in modern society. As students, we are the thinkers of the future, but now we look for simple answers through technology before thinking. The author emphasizes the idea that we become so reliant on technology as a means for accessing and solving problems, we then lose the ability to use our minds.
At the core of this quote is the need to find a balance between thinking for ourselves while still relying on technology. Technology has become essential in education, but hasn’t always been. We can not forget that education should be done in tandem with technology, and not only with technology.
By using technology in our quest for answers, only certain levels of information are accessed. For instance, when you ask Siri, “What is the study of STS?” this is what comes up.
Yes, STS is “the study of how society, politics, and culture affect scientific research and technological innovation,” however, it can also explain the historical significance and thought process of a time period. By using a definition grabbed from a platform of technology, we lose deeper thought. Computers, calculators and phones can not think for us, therefore we must not let them replace us.
The study of Science, Technology and Society holds onto our desire to think critically about both the problems our world faces and the varying possible solutions. STS is where humanistic reflection crosses with science and allows for the rigid and procedural exterior to take second place. The foundations of scientific discovery stemmed from human curiosity. STS has made space for continuing scientific discovery as it has forced us to reexamine the purpose of research in general. Without a desire to continue challenging our brains with new ideas, innovative solutions in subjects like ethics, human rights, and environmental policy would be impossible to conjure.
The next time you go to Google or Siri for an answer, take a second to think.
References:
“Gaga Over Google: More than a Search Engine, Less than a Mind.” The New Atlantis, no. 5 (2004): 99-101. Accessed August 29, 2020. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43152109.