Aidan Skelly Final Blog

As I grow older, I gain knowledge and wisdom and become a better and smarter person. I become capable of things I wasn’t capable of before and I meet more and more people. The same exact thing can be said for technology. As time goes on, technology is becoming more powerful and more prevalent in our lives. As someone born when digital technology was already in use, I am a digital native. This means that, growing up, I had access to digital forms of technology. These forms of technology can vary from computers, to ipods, to smartphones. All of this, I had for as long as I can remember. I remember the first time I ever saw an iPod in person. I was in 6^th grade. I was 11 years old. My dad on the other hand, was in his 40s. While my dad is definitely good with technology, there are many others his age who are vaguely familiar with it. These people, are digital immigrants. These people were born before the digital technology boom. They had all of these luxuries introduced into their lives way after they had learned to function without them. They went to college, did research assignments, drove places, and met people, all without the use of digital technology. My generation, the digital natives, had access to search engines, cell phones, GPS systems, social media, and everything else along those lines. I almost forget what it is like to want an answer to something, but have to wait until later to figure it out. Nowadays, if I want to know something or prove my friends wrong, I whip out my smart phone, type a couple words in a search bar, and boom, I tell them why I’m right. Before, I would wait until I got home and Google it. My dad and his generation, they would have to search elsewhere for the answer.

            This dramatic change over time has created two distinct opinions: Hype and Hysteria. Hype refers to all of those that view the advancement of technology as a positive improvement. They believe that it helps for the most part. The people who lean towards hysteria tend to have the opposite view. They believe that the advancements in technology are harming new generations. They believe things like text messaging is destroying the English language and that smart phones are going to cause us to lose our ability to critically think. People stand about 50/50 in their opinions on the topic. While I don’t think either is true, I definitely believe that certain aspects of each one are true. If I was 20 years old 20 years ago and I was lost in the woods, I better know how to use a compass pretty damn well. Now I can just whip out my phone and it practically tells me how many steps I have to go in order to find my way home. In this example, it’s clear that there are positives and negatives, especially for me, who doesn’t know how to navigate with a compass. Technology, while it provided me a useful service, has taken away a useful skill from me.

            In the grand scheme of things, it is hard to say whether modern technology is good or bad. There are pros and cons of each, and in my opinion, they balance each other out. Only time will tell what effect the rapidly evolving technology will have on the human race. Maybe one day all power will somehow cut out and we won’t have any more technology. At this rate, things won’t go too well if that happens. So with that being said, regardless of whether you stand on the side of hype or you lean towards hysteria, we should all be praying that some apocalyptic power outage doesn’t occur.