Technology: Have We Gone Too Far?

It’s hard to imagine a world without technology. Everywhere you look there are computers, phones, TVs and machines. Believe it or not though, we used to be able to manage without these everyday necessities and not that long ago either. If you sit in a waiting room now without staring at your phone, or don’t buy half your Christmas presents from Amazon, you’re considered strange. But why has the world come to this? What was wrong with having a conversation with someone, or actually going to the shops to buy something?

I believe the answer is laziness. It’s a million times easier to press a few buttons than to deal with the hassle of trying to find the particular brand of sausages you simply must have that Tesco have inconveniently moved from where they were last week. And queues. I can think of a million and 1 better things to do with my life than stand in a line behind other fed-up shoppers.

But has it gone too far? Are shops, books and magazines going to become a thing of the past soon? Since the introduction of devices such as the tablets and the Kindle, the sale of books has hit rock bottom. People simply aren’t buying them anymore. And this spells bad news for book shops, libraries, authors and our imaginations. Without books children can’t develop their own fantasy worlds, and how are they going to learn to read? It’s all very well and good saying that they can read on devices such as iPads, but realistically is a child going to sit and read when there are other things to do on there like the surf the internet and play games? I don’t think so.

Not only are children suffering, workers are too. Remember the days of 9 -5? Not anymore. More and more job hours are becoming longer and more irregular because of the demand for services 24/7. But what you may not have realised is that even the people that do work the “normal” hours have been affected by technology. It is now virtually impossible to get away from work because of emails, texts and all other forms of communication that as an employee you are supposed to respond to. Days off, weekends and evenings are supposed to be work-free – a time to relax; so having constant contact could cause stress, having an effect on our health.

Now don’t get me wrong, technology is not all bad – it has helped us to talk to someone on the other side of the world, explore space and create lifesaving medicines – but will it go too far? Will there be a day when people won’t have heard of the word “book”, or no one talks to each other? Japan have already had to take action and now have an “anti-loneliness” café where single customers can eat with a stuffed animal called Moomin.

Used in the right way, technology is one of the best things available to us, used in the wrong way, it could be the worse.

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