Technology and Culture: Just Trying to Make Life Easier

Technology and Culture: Just Trying to Make Life Easier

The power of humans to change and adapt themselves is incredible. We see throughout time that people in general have always searched for "a better way" to do things. Whether it’s in war, or in the medical field, in business, or in one’s own home; people are always on the lookout for what will make their lives easier. Many people associate an easier life directly with how much technology they have.

“A better way.” We hear that everywhere now. Just turn on the television, your car radio, look at a billboard, your newspapers, and obviously all over your magazines; what do you see? Things to make your life faster, healthier, more enjoyable, more social, more comfortable, EASIER!!! Even these advertisers are making changes and adapting advertising to fit current target audiences, making their jobs better.

Now, whether or not the things they advertise are commodities or necessities is not my point. Either way, behind every advertisement is an idea. Yes, very often in today’s world the idea is to make as much money as humanly possible, but there is a greater truth and origin behind our fetish for technology.

Let me take you back to a time when people fought with the sword and diseases easily treated today could slaughter thousands. What did these people want? The same thing you and want today, for things to be easier, healthier, just better! It is interesting to note how so many of the inventions and innovations of those days were geared toward simple survival. After we are surviving we have time to think of our quality of life. This is the difference between the “dark” or middle ages and the Renaissance Era. These two basic instincts are the major driving forces of invention.

Susan J. Douglas said of one world changing invention that affected the world’s entertainment, military, political, social and many other aspects of life:

“In the 1970s, a series of technological advances, most notably the expanded use of geosynchronous satellites to transmit television signals and the replacement of film with video, meant that news and events from around the world could be broadcast as they were happening, live, into people’s homes in real time. It was this 'liveness,' this 'you are there' immediacy, that fueled visions of the global village and the more attuned, empathetic subject position it was seen to cultivate.” (Douglas)

In conclusion, man is amazing. He works to improve life in general, even if the technologies he creates may only complicates things in the end.

Works Cited

Douglas. (Oct. 14 2011) http://etc.technologyandculture.net/2010/06/douglas/