I found myself daydreaming about what life would be like
without reading and writing. If news and information was only spread verbally,
how would I function? How different would communication be? I started
daydreaming about this while reading the Shallows. On the last couple pages of
chapter three, page 56 in my copy, Carr mentions that, “In a purely oral
culture, thinking is governed by the capacity of human memory. Knowledge is
what you recall, and what you recall is limited to what you can hold in your mind.”
If you’ve ever played the game of telephone, you understand that oral stories
are easily altered and are difficult to remain the same each time they are
told. If our lives were confined to strictly oral communication, how would we
be able to spread new knowledge? Could information ever effectively be
reiterated to many people?
We
often spend a lot of our life debating and disputing the use of text and print
because technology has advanced so much that we often spend more time
communicating behind a keyboard than in person. However, the use of print
opened a world of possibilities and has saved countless lives because it simply
makes communication so much faster and more efficient. We can find out about
events all around the world in the click of a button and emergency situations
can be handled with ease by the use of a simple phone call. When technology as
such is used for personal and non-business related reasons, it easily creates
this addiction to technology due to the everyday use of cell phones and social
networking sites. It makes me wonder, if we limited the use of technology to
business reasons and emergencies, would we gain our independence from our
phones and the internet, and still use technology to keep important
communication? It wouldn’t be an easy process, and it may not even be possible,
but when we use technology for these social networking sites and texting to
replace real face to face communication, we are simply poisoning ourselves.
Will we be able to find a medium ground for the use of technology in the future
so that we are not as dependent on it while still using the technology for
communicating important information? How would this feat ever be accomplished?
I believe that humans will never allow technology to only be used in "business reasons and emergencies." This is because there would be riots among human society. People who have jobs that aren't business related will yell in outrage that the elite is hoarding the technology for themselves. They will say that the policy of using technology for business is a scam in order to keep technology out of the hands of the masses. If this policy were to emerge, the definition of an emergency would surely change. An emergency is known as a dangerous situation which requires immediate aid. An emergency in this future society would be considered something such as rivial as forgetting to tell your mom what flavor ice cream to buy. I agree that your solution is nice to think about, but it is not realistic.
ReplyDelete