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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?
Compared to the insanely cool, science-fiction advanced consumer tech, everything from cell phones to high-speed internet available in Europe, Japan and South Korea, the US is dowdy and backwards. Cingular ain't got squat on DoMoCo, and even a Mielle washer/dryer set is lightyears ahead of the stone-age clunkers Kenmore and Maytag inflict on the American household.
When it comes to technology obsession, the High Street in London and the Akihabara in Tokyo are where it's at.
SoupIsGood Food
i have friend whose dad is a tech junkie. All kinds of gadgets high-speed, workstation laptops etc. One day his son (my friend) got fed with it all, and moed to middle of Mojave desert, where he get no electricity, and certainly no television signal. And he has to drive 5 miles just to get to the closest payfone.
But his daughter, who has doesn't even know what a television is, is very wise for her age (i.e. 7 yrs). Here, I make a distinction between knowledge and wisdom. She may not have all the knowledge, but she is certainly wiser then other kids of her age or even some grown ups.
Would you do something like this? Would you make such a daring move for you children's sake?
Consensus is good, but informed dictatorship is better
On one hand, yes I'm addicted -- I can barely go a day without at least briefly connecting to the internet, and I don't even want to know how many hours I've logged playing my little gnome mage on World of Warcraft.
However, for many of us, the dependence is more than just a regular old physical/psychological addiction. My marks at school, for example, depend on my being able to get on a computer and access the internet on a regular basis. Many assignments are made available solely through a class website or WebCT, and in two of my classes this past term, every single assignment had to be handed in via the Unix handin command (or the web-based Windows equivalent). Admittedly, I am a computer science student, but there aren't all that many courses in which computers or other forms of technology are completely absent -- even arts students are expected to write essays, and few professors will accept handwritten submissions these days.
Yeah, I'd say we are addicted to technology. We're a narcissistic people who are obsessed with the things we have created. I don't mean just Americans, I mean humans in general. It's perfecttly normal. The only way it becomes dangerous is when we reach a point where we rely on technology so much we literally could not survive without it.
People can say all they like about technology causing people to slack off, but there is no reason why it shouldn't. Why build things that can make work easier when we can build things that remove the need for work? They say that modern civilization is only possible because we have an abundance of food and can spend our time on other endeavors. We are now experiencing what will turn into an abundance of time. After enough time passes we will eventually reach a level of advancement where we won't need to work anymore, and will have developed safe guards so that we don't have to worry about losing our technology. This, of course, is assuming that we don't blow ourselves up first.
My vetenarian was complaining today that she used to have a system which used Ricochet, a dumb terminal in her truck, and a Xenix server in her office to access horse medical records remotely. This provided a 38Kb/s connection. Since Ricochet went out of business, that's no longer possible. Data over cellular is less available, slower, harder to set up, and more expensive. Yes, you can set up a VPN, and "web enable" the server, but it's more trouble than it is worth.
I went to Niger this summer, where I was even out of range of the nearest cell tower, had no electricity, and was surrounded by goats and chickens. I spent two weeks without most of the technology I'm used to, and that's a lot of technology.
You know what? I didn't mind one bit. No withdrawl symptoms. Strand me in a city in the US though, and I'd start to feel the pain. It seems like it's partly a function of the environment.
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I'd have to say that "addiction" is a badly overused term these days. Anytime someone has a bad habit, they'll call it an addiction, as if doing so removes any responsibility for changing their behavior.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Forest tribes are addicted to technology just like americans. They cannot live without bows, arrows, and fire tools.
There you are, staring at me again.