TBO.com - TBO is Tampa Bay Online

Highlands Today

Humans And Technology Have Strange End Results

ADVERTISEMENT

Highlands Today Staff

Published: February 19, 2008

Just as interesting as new technology are the years following its introduction and finally seeing how we use it. Sometimes it's exciting, and sometimes it's little depressing. The Internet is both.

Never in the history of humankind have people had the ability to communicate so quickly and access more information. It's nearly impossible to find bad in that – except we have.

It's true that information is only a mouse click away, but the quality of information is the real question. Too many people gravitate to places on the Internet telling them what they want to hear, not what they need to hear. So that makes a lot of us believe we're intelligent on issues when, in fact, we've just bought into someone else's point of view and call it fact.

Political websites are the worst. Someone with a flair for writing can spew garbage about any candidate and get a lot of people believing it. Our country is all about free speech, and there's nothing wrong with stating opinions. In fact, it's healthy. The problem occurs when people are mentally lazy and don't check out the facts.

The other interesting part of seeing how people use the Internet is that it's become more about gossip, e-mail and entertainment than most of us expected. Sure, there's plenty of commerce on it as well, and that portion continues to grow, but by and large, it's still about chatting, checking airline ticket prices and regular activities like that. And pornography found the perfect home online.

It's not just Internet technology that's been interesting to watch. How people use cell phones these days might surprise the pioneers of that technology. When a person leaning on a shopping cart at the grocery store has an inane conversations throughout his or her shopping visit, it dashes any visions of using cell phones for important or emergency conversations. They are used for that as well, but just not very often.

Humans with technology are fascinating creatures. What starts out as a way to do one task ends up being used for something completely different. It doesn't always make us more intelligent beings, but it usually entertains us.

Would Alexander Graham Bell would be surprised? Yes, and he'd probably be e-mailing up a storm telling everyone we are using his technology all wrong.

Share this:

Loading Comments...

Email Print

ADVERTISEMENT