Slashdot Mirror
Are Americans Addicted to Technology?
jomammy writes "According to a recent Wired article, the majority of Americans are becoming increasingly dependant on their gadgets. High speed internet seems to be the one most determined to be a 'necessity'. A third of the country is said to pay more than $200.00 a month for their addiction, where 4 out of 10 pay between $100.00 and $150.00 a month. Other items in this list of 'gadgets' include, mp3 players, dvd players, laptops, handhelds, etc." How addicted are we? How addicted are you?
"According to a recent Wired article, the majority of Americans are becoming increasingly dependant on their gadgets."
And Japan is what? In the dark ages?
Oh, please. This is just more useless drivel written to sell magazines. Just because something makes your life easier or more fun, doesn't mean everyone is "addicted" because they enjoy using it. Are Americans adicted to tooth brushes, too? 99% of us admit to using them at least daily! OH NO!
If this is the case, am I addicted to food?
My 3D Texturing Skinning work (under construction)
If we are talking cliniacal definitions of addiction, i.e. falsely convinced that we cannot live without something and willing to orob/maim/kill/destroy our lives, to obtain it then it depends. I think ther we need to specify the technology in question.
If we are talking a general "growing too soft/dependent upon specific tech" then I would say yes, especially with the internet. I know far too many people who feel the need to have a machine up all the time.
But I think we should really go more basic than that; Electricity.
The standards that we are used to in America, and the rest of the industrialized world (stable, widely available power that rarely if ever goes down) is a) uncommon in the rest of the world, and b) an anomoly in human existence. Few of my peers know how to make a fire or even what to do when the power goes down (hint, the electric can opener will no longer work).
The level of panic surrounding the Y2k bug should have made this clear to anyone. Far too many people (some of them policymakers) panicked at the thought of "global power outages" and, as Katrina showed, far too many were left stranded, unprepared, and unaided when a real disaster struck.
In my opinion "addiction" to mp3 players is just icing on the cake.
in general)I know too many others who *have no clue*
I'm addicted to fire, electricity, housing, cooked food and sharpened metal tools.
Or maybe sometimes technology improves your life so you use it.
Addiction is when something makes your life worse, but you keep using it because you are irrationally drawn to it.
====
Crudely Drawn Games
Would you make such a daring move for you children's sake?
You are purposefully implying, with this question, that it is a good thing (to prevent your child from using technology). Would I do something daring for the sake of my child? You bet. Do I think that removing them from technology represents a case where the child is better off? No.
Your one data point notwithstanding, I believe that a person is more likely to be happy, healthy, and intelligent if they have access to the full depth and breadth of what the world has to offer (including such things as: travelling to other countries, modern healtcare, books of all types, the internet, learning different languages, etc.).
Restricting a child's access to tools is silly. Smart kids will be smart no matter what. Giving them access to more of the world will make them more worldly.
I so love that phrase because it suggests weakness of some sort. As if governments didn't exist to protect and help the people and anyone who thinks otherwize deserves a rude awakening.
In the case of Katrina the very government agencies that we have formed, funded and trained to care for the sick, the elderly, the disposessed of our society, were placed in the hands of self-centered morons whose only interest was in settling the "shirtsleeves up or down" issue. People who could not leave because they were too sick and didn't own cars were being told to "take some cash and drive away". Even now no reliable plan exists to get them home and Karl Rove is directing the reconstruction efforts.
We form governments to protect us as a whole, because individual humans, however many guns they have, are weak and likely to die. To suggest that people who looked to the government that they supported to help them were "weak" or overly dependent" is in my opinion incorrect. Rather wwe should say that the government failed the people. The government failed in its most essential function. What's worse it did so because people let it fail, perhaps even made it fail not because it should not have succeeded.
How about electricity, indoor plumbing, toilets in general. Don't forgent anything to do with farming. Plows, harvesters, trucks to ship food. I would say that if all technology disappeard tomorrow, 99% of the population would die. So, yes we are addicted, as most of the world is.
I don't see too many of the construction worker's using laptops while they jackhammer around a manhole.
Lots of jobs out there hardly rely on computers to actually DO the job. While at some point a computer is used in designing or laying out a plan, it's hardly "every single job that pays more than minimum wage". I'd wager most of those construction workers make more than a lot of programmers, and they deserve their pay. Construction is a long and hard job especially being in extreme weather conditions, not to mention dangerous with all the "we know better than you" drivers out there driving off into construction sites because they can't keep their eyes on the road.
Side story. I heard a tale about a road crew who was tearing up approaches of people's driveways to prepare them for a new concrete approach as they came down with the sidewalk. One of the apartment complex owners complained that they should asphalt most of her parking lot because the "new" stuff they were putting in was inconveniencing her making them use the secondary exit. So they tore up more of her parking lot to appease her, and she wanted more work done after that (for free of course). The foreman said no, she complained to his superiors they said the ball was in his court. He still said no, and that she would have to wait for them to come back to finish what they started due to extra work she demanded they do. And because of the stink she made, she had about a foot deep hole in one of her parking lot entrances. It was well blocked, coned, barreled, so anyone driving a reasonable speed and LOOKING would see it and know to avoid bypassing the barrier. Every single morning the crew came into work, they had to call a tow truck to get a car out of the hole because people had been using her apartments parking lot as a short cut around a light...and they'd come flying around the corner leave about 10 feet of tread marks trying to get stopped before the front or sometimes the entire car went down in the hole. And I'd say it happened enough that a few of them made more than minimum wage and their job required computer interaction, but it still didn't stop them from driving into a deep, well-marked hole daily. And if anyone would have been in the hole, they'd be hurt if not dead. If I were the government, I'd take their license for at least 5 years involving accidents in construction zones, 15 years if they hurt anyone doing it, and forever if they kill someone due to negligence (rubber-necking, driving too close to the barriers *semis can chuck a barrel a good 20 at head height if it hits one*)
Case: email Case: IM Case: online gaming Case: forums Case: surfing Case: RSS Case: interactive purchasing Case: downloading entertainment Case: blogging Case: social infrastructure Go on. Run the sieve. Tell me what's not addictive. We're social and interactive creatures. Ask the question again. What knid of dumbass question is this? Yo: Cowboy Neal--> learn to ask a reasonable question.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
Love means never asking your partner to prove it.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
i find it strange that i have absolutely nothing to do when my internet goes down....
"Times have not become more violent, they have just become more televised." - Marilyn Manson
When I tell you that I love you
Don't test my love
Accept my love
Don't test my love
Because maybe
I don't love you
All that much
-Dan Bern
KFG
from the article:
Some people freely admit to being high-tech junkies.
"The internet connection is my lifeline," said Jennifer Strother, a mother of two young children who lives in Smithfield, Virginia. "It's the connection to friends, e-mail -- especially for stay-at-home moms. I'm hungry for adult conversation and any news that isn't Dora the Explorer or Blue's Clues."
How is this an admission to being a hi tech junkie? The very reason for her use of the internet is not tech, but communication. As with most of the article the authors attempt to classify us as "junkies" fails. He or she fails to see that for the most part, tech purchases are so that we may consume media such as TV or Music or communicate with others. This is not an hi tech additiction as the author would have us believe, because the technology itself is not the motivator for purchase.