Consumer Products & disadvantages of our network culture

The power of technology is intriguing. Through technology, corporate and large multinational companies are controlling the world like they have the monopoly on how people should be and what products they should consume.

Technology has changed the world and our life. It has endorsed for a new way of communication. Phoning people with a mobile phone and being reachable 24/7 is now easier than ever before. Life has become much more comfortable and more exciting as a whole thanks to technology and related products people are consuming.

On the other hand, technology may become detrimental towards our lives.

The fact that we can gather information so easily by searching through Google, searching in Wikipedia without the need to read that many books is harmful in my opinion. Because this makes people search for the information directly without looking through books. They learn the answers that way, but they haven’t researched much as to how they learned it. If they had read books for the particular information they were looking for, they would know it in much more detail and they’ll be able to tell you how they know these answers.

There are indeed people who would search for books and read through carefully to gather that given information. But that tendency of going to buy books or visit the library is not so frequent nowadays. Also visiting the library can be hectic for some when they can get that information straight from the internet sitting in front of their computer at home.

Like Oscar Wilde once said, “In old days books were written by men of letters and read by the public. Nowadays books are written by the public and read by nobody.”
Even though he has said that over a hundred years ago, it still has relevance today.

There is a growing tendency that we are getting socially more and more isolated because we are too engaged with technology. While we can talk to our friends on our mobile phones, we don’t go to each other’s houses for social contact like we used to do twenty years ago.

But we all know that too much technology means little movement, less exercise, and, above all shorter lifespan!

There is a trend in recent years that we all have somehow become slaves of modern technology.

References:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscar_Wilde [accessed 28/10/10]
http://www.kingkong.demon.co.uk/gsr/maxims.htm [accessed 01/11/10]
http://www.helium.com/items/1370731-modern-technology-the-internet-demise-newspapers-the-rocky-mountain-news [accessed 03/11/10]
http://www.edubook.com/is-technology-making-us-lazy/23428/ [accessed 04/11/10]