Soical Impact of Tehnology, Assignment 1
Social Impact Technology, SC245
Assignment 01
December 10, 2012
The technology that interests me the most is the continued advancement of the cell phone. In 1999 I was standing in Times Square on my cell phone with my children when the ball dropped in Times Square. The night in which the world was supposed to fall apart because of Y2K, nothing happened, networks continued to keep on talking. At that time, the cell phone industry was nothing compared to what it is today. Cell phones were large and clunky, not everyone owned one. The only reason we had one is because my husband’s work relationships dictated it.
Today, you can’t walk into a room without seeing someone who is either talking on a cell phone or texting, checking their email. Today’s smart phones allow us to be “instantly” in touch with anyone who has a cell phone. You can talk, check your email or carry on a “conversation” without ever hearing the other person’s voice. In the 1950’s, there were only a handful of cell phones with embedded computer technology(1), today so many people have them we have become a society of instant gratification. Our solutions for being out of touch then, have created some of the problems of today.
The children of today, including my four; don’t know how to carry on a conversation face to face without the help of a cell phone or computer aided device. People text all day long and can’t carry on a “conversation” face to face. The personal conversation is now a screen conversation with abbreviated words and phrases. Makes you wonder if some people can even spell correctly without auto correct on their phones. When asked if he was saying that teenagers texting at the dinner table are just following the lead of adults, Dalton Conley stated “the entire culture has shifted and often the youth-the so called digital natives-have been completely reared and socialized within the normative context. Older folks like me are caught between the
Assignment 01
December 10, 2012
The technology that interests me the most is the continued advancement of the cell phone. In 1999 I was standing in Times Square on my cell phone with my children when the ball dropped in Times Square. The night in which the world was supposed to fall apart because of Y2K, nothing happened, networks continued to keep on talking. At that time, the cell phone industry was nothing compared to what it is today. Cell phones were large and clunky, not everyone owned one. The only reason we had one is because my husband’s work relationships dictated it.
Today, you can’t walk into a room without seeing someone who is either talking on a cell phone or texting, checking their email. Today’s smart phones allow us to be “instantly” in touch with anyone who has a cell phone. You can talk, check your email or carry on a “conversation” without ever hearing the other person’s voice. In the 1950’s, there were only a handful of cell phones with embedded computer technology(1), today so many people have them we have become a society of instant gratification. Our solutions for being out of touch then, have created some of the problems of today.
The children of today, including my four; don’t know how to carry on a conversation face to face without the help of a cell phone or computer aided device. People text all day long and can’t carry on a “conversation” face to face. The personal conversation is now a screen conversation with abbreviated words and phrases. Makes you wonder if some people can even spell correctly without auto correct on their phones. When asked if he was saying that teenagers texting at the dinner table are just following the lead of adults, Dalton Conley stated “the entire culture has shifted and often the youth-the so called digital natives-have been completely reared and socialized within the normative context. Older folks like me are caught between the
References: 1. Quinn, Michael J (2011), Ethics in Technology, Introduction, pages 2-3 2. Quinn, Michael J (2011) Ethics in Technology, an interview with Dalton Conley, page 51 3. Cellphone-technical definition, online at http://yourdictionary.com/cellphone Accessed December 10, 2012