Even in countries that still live in the 1920’s, technology has reached the average person in some way or another. They may see advertisements for high tech gadgets that they’ll never be able to afford, let alone figure out how to use them, but they will be touched by them in some form or another. Aside from not having the electricity to charge their gadgets, over 60% of the population will never be able to buy any of the laptops, smartphones, tablets, personal music and video players, exercise monitors and watches that make up the average techies wish list.
The other "high" technology
Other than those who will never be able to afford them, there is also a segment of society that should never be allowed near any of the new, high tech gadgets that society covets these days. A priest in Ottawa gets “time served and 1 year’s probation” for bringing over 100,000 pictures and hundreds of videos of child pornography into the country on an iPad. The lawyer had tried to imply that his client, the priest, had been picked out of the lineup of fliers coming into Canada because of stereotyping; if he’s a priest, he must have kiddie porn with him? Really? As a defense? Come on!
Child pornography has increased by, like, 10,000 times since the advent of digital photography. There are few words that you can type into any search engine on your computer and not have a bunch of kiddie porn and/or pornographic and dating websites in the returns. Some of the best email and search engine filters can’t block all of these degrading and illegal sites from popping up.
Other societal pains caused by technology include;
* Institutions of learning losing out to texting and sexting.
* The killing of the English language
* The average youth’s IQ
What about you?
What about you? What part or parcel of high technology do you crave? Deplore? Admire? Can’t live without? Want to shoot all users of?
Let me know, via a comment, and I will include that in the next post in this series.
Things I Think I Thunk, pt. l 
Comments on: "Societal Pains Caused by Technology" (5)
Hi Marc! I can’t seem to live without my various word processing programs, my internet connection for research, and my huge collection of music (and therefore, Audiogalaxy). I love my laptop too, though it’s been blue-screening me lately. (A sign of impending demise? I hope not!) Someday, I’d like to be able to afford a Tablet, though I can’t imagine typing blog posts, articles, etc. on one of those virtual keyboards. The one on my phone drives me batty.
What does dismay me about technology is how easy it makes it to exploit the vulnerable (as you mention above) or infringe on someone’s copyright. I follow a lot of authors, artists, and musicians and see at least once a week how one or the other is having to deal with yet another pirate site.
Great post today!
Karen
Thanks for the visit, Karen! a lot of writers who submit to helium and Yahoo! have that problem too – just Google your name, or titles of articles you’ve written, and by and large there will be some out there that you never sold or got paid for.
Hi Marc,
I’d be cast adrift without my desktop computer. The present incarnation is my sixth desktop in 25 years.
I have a cellphone, a 7 or 8 year old dumb phone that I carry with me whenever I go out but seldom turn on. It’s for me to make outgoing calls. I don’t need to be connected 24/7 thank you very much.
I think the real bane of modern technology is so called multi-tasking, an oxymoron if I ever heard one.
Modern technology has spawned some marvelous tools. The Internet comes to mind as one of the more important innovations. I read a piece the other day about how MIT will be revolutionizing higher education with MITx, a way to study online and receive proper credentials. Another article talked about a college professor who is starting a company to offer serious online higher education. I think higher education as we know it is doomed. The entire structure of education (and I’ll include secondary education here as well) is geared to the benefit of the academics and teachers, not the students. We can no longer afford to keep them in the lap of luxury at our expense.
John
Right on, John! Thanks for the visit, and for that well thought out comment!
Yeah, school is most definitely going to be another victim of technology, and rightfully so! You go to college, they not only let you use your iPad, they offer free WiFi… they know that once you graduate, all you need to do is look things up on the Internet, so now they have to go back to teaching the basics, and letting the students prove that they can navigate the Information Highway for their diplomas.
I do believe that there will always be a need for some classroom interactions, though. To think that someone could be certified as an apprentice electrician, or a brain surgeon via an online diploma, well, that gets rather scary. Book smarts is one thing, but people need to prove that they can think outside the box, and react properly when needed.
(hope you don’t mind if I use that comment for the base of a new post?)
Let me tell you a little story ’bout a man who was a Jedi A poor mnntuaioeer, barely kept his family fed-eye He was wand’rin’ in the woods with his buddy, the Wookiee A-thinkin’ ’bout Princess Leia, that sweet bit of n