Saturday, February 28, 2015

What in the World is Wrong with People?

As an electrical engineer who worked almost exclusively on analog to digital conversion (the key to our digital era), one would think I am a high tech junkie. I am not! I still own analog equipment and have a flip phone. I have been able to see the evils of technology along the way. I remember my bosses wanting to give me a corporate phone and hook me up with beepers or whatever the current technology was. I did not want them and I did not require anyone who worked for me to have these evil devices. Why are they evil? They enable your boss or workplace to harass you 24/7 so you can never escape work.

Facebook, Twitter, and other social mediums were developed by socially challenged engineers because they needed to figure out a way to communicate. Instead of talking to the guy in the office next to them, they could tweet them or send them a message on FB. In other words, there is nothing social about social mediums, it was used as a means to replace personal contact.

Sure, there are a lot of good things that come with the internet and social media. But, there is so much evil it surely outweighs the benefits:

· People are less personal and privacy is all but gone

· It is a medium for people to bully and stalk others

· People use it for other criminal reasons: recruiting terrorists and identity theft are on the rise

· People use it for divisive political purposes such as propaganda, hacking, and fear mongering

· The technology takes jobs away from people

· There are more leaks of proprietary information

· It makes unhealthy both mentally and physically

. Texting and or talking on phones has turned into the biggest highway killer

One could argue instead of making the world a better place by uniting and bringing people around the globe closer together, social media has done the opposite. If you ask me, the evils outweigh the advantages of social media. I would be all for shutting down the internet to stop groups like ISIS to brainwash and recruit people to commit acts of terror; I would be for shutting down the internet so people could once again learn how to interact with each other socially; I would be for shutting down the internet if it saved the lives of innocent drivers; and so on.

1 comment:

  1. I'm not a big technology person either, Patrick. People who are addicted to their cell phones annoy me to no end. On the other hand, without the internet we couldn't blog! :)

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