Technology, Human Beings and the Fate of the Earth: a Social Critique of Modern Life

It’s both funny and sad that as soon as people leave their familiar comfort zone, when they are alone, say at a coffee shop or waiting in line for a bus, they automatically, almost reactively, reach for the cell phone to call or text someone who will reconnect them with the safe and familiar world from which they have momentarily wandered away. The average persons’ lack of ability, or willingness, to encounter an unknown situation or territory reveals their lack of tolerance for being alone, as well as their lack of curiosity or propensity to simply notice and appreciate their surroundings – as if their bodily senses had been nullified into a potential danger zone in which their very stability of self would quickly fragment should they let go a little, observe and potentially interact with the unfolding world around them. Yes, we’ve learned to live in little bubbles of safety which cut us off from our fellow-humans – we no longer live in the actual world, but in our own self-created worlds, via the latest form of technology.

I suspect that our modern sense of security has been entrained to operate in collusion with these technological devices that have slyly entrapped our minds even as they have offered us incredible new possibilities. Our reliance on new and ever-advancing technologies, such as the mobile phone – which in a few short years has also become a mobile photo album, mobile internet, camera, video machine and multi-media entertainment center – has developed into quite a habit, an unconscious addiction that is shaping the very nature of our personalities, both personal and collective, and even, God forbid, our souls. What need have we, the general public, for an imagination when so many limitlessly stimulating devices are available in our world? Who needs an inner world at all when the outer world of our own creations has become so evocative, so seducing, so ever-demanding, evasive and totalitarian? We are continually inundated with advertisements and