Why Technology Is Not Causing The Downfall of Modern Society

As you look around and see hundreds of people with their heads slightly tilted down, thumbing up and down on the smartphone glass or viewing our children picking up the video game controller upon waking, it may seem like modern technology has taken over our minds, our lives and even our souls.

There are plenty of good arguments that would suggest that technology is making us dumber, fatter and less engaged with the real world. A prime example of what our society might become is depicted in the film Idiocracy - where even the President is dawning some "Bling" and no one knows how all this futuristic technology works that happens to do everything for them.

If you spend a lot of time at the computer, then you are labeled a Geek, and if you spend too much time on your smartphone (which is also a computer) then you might be labeled a Facebook addict. Tweeting every 5 seconds is probably not good for the psyche and 8 hours spent editing in Photoshop is sure to give you carpel tunnel.

But is this a fault of technology? Can we really blame bits plastic, metal and silicon. It seems silly to think about in this context but out in the real world, there are many who view modern technology as a rotten scourge to humanity.

I hear it a lot more often than I used to. "If it weren't for (insert generic technology term), then society would be much better off."

The problem with this way of thinking is that it can be applied to different times in human history where it doesn't make sense.  It would be easy enough to say that if it hadn't been for the invention of cars then we wouldn't have so many deaths due to accidents on the road.

Gun owners might be able to back me up here, as they know it's certainly not the gun's fault that it took part in the roll of a shooting. The gun didn't pull it's own trigger, and even if it did, a human would have programmed it to do so.

You can't blame technology for a persons negative actions. I could use a car to go rob a store, but does that make the car responsible for the crime? No. Is it the telephone's fault that little Johnny made a prank call to your grandmother? Not so much. Someone can get murdered with a weapon, but does the weapon serve a prison sentence? Not since last time I checked.

And you can't blame the forester's chainsaw that cuts the trees you wipe your ass with.

Be Reasonable And Use Common Sense

The same can be applied to the ever popular Social Media game. You may want to blame it for the millions of duck face selfies, but the reality is that people are free to do whatever they want and just because you can do something doesn't mean you should. Using common sense in any situation is always the best practice.

Parents will quickly blame obesity in children on the rising popularity of tablets, when it's ultimately the parent's responsibility to gauge a child's usage, much the same as with the television or video games.

These attitudes are even easier adopted by folks in small town dwellings and rural areas where technology is utilized in a much slower fashion. This is not a jab at country folk (I happen to be one of them) but merely a lifelong observation of a culture that is much different than those of suburban and urban ares.

What irks me even more is when people blast modern technology while using it themselves. How many rants on Twitter, Google+ and Facebook have you seen about how awful it is that everyone is so engaged in this technology all while using it daily themselves.

As humans we are always quick to point the finger, blaming objects, groups, governments, police and regulatory organizations. We need to stop blaming the perils of society on something else and work diligently to help solve those problems. Many of these problems can be solved by the use of computer programming and web app development but certainly not all.

It Will Be Ok

We often only hear about when technology fails, such as when the security of a company is compromised or over-hyped coverage about the NSA and Edward Snowden is blown out of proportion all over the media. Whereas we seldom give praise to innovations in Healthcare IT that are saving people's lives and enabling us to live longer.

Technology is like anything else. People will use it for good and bad reasons. People will abuse it. People will use it to make our lives better and people will use it to change the world.

In fact, most of the modernized world is only made possible because of our addiction to oil and oil by- products. People that are quick to jump on technology's back don't often don't have this realization. We can really trace the way we live our lives back to humanities roots with technology, inventing crude tools and making wall paintings - and going even further back, we could blame the dinosaurs that created the fossil fuels to begin with.

Heck, why not blame God or the Big Bang Theory for all our troubles.

Just because we can build an Atom Bomb, doesn't mean we should blow entire countries to kingdom come. It's not the bomb's fault. It's not technology's fault.

It's our fault.

Photo Credit: Technology Is A Given by Scott McLeod BY-NC-SA