Technology has changed the way we as humans live; it changes our understanding of the way things work and changes the way we interact with one another. Technology was once opposed but is now somewhat welcomed into our homes. During the renaissance period, technology was opposed, as the church believed that technology would oppose the beliefs of god. Well they were right. Technology isn’t just computers or TV’s, its engineering science. And in Science, our goal is to progress and understand everything there is to understand about us, our planet and beyond. However, the way we understand and experience this concept the most is that its just to make our lives much more efficient. When you look around, what do you see? Just at an intersection in downtown New York or Los Angeles, you see people walking around with cell phones and carrying around laptop cases, other’s just listening to music. But then the companies that build these types of technology want to make them better and more efficient. So they keep releasing new devices that are smaller and faster and mostly more costly.

Technology is a concept that will never end. new devices will be released and then refined just about endlessly. Not even if or when we start running out of resources, because we would have recycled parts to build new technology and we will build new technology to possibly refine available resources or even find another planet that has the same resources. Technology now is a concept that we cannot survive without; an average North American person needs technology to eat, to entertain, to cook, and to do many other daily functions. Lets face it we need technology to survive. But this is to an extent, for example a computer can be one of mans best friends, it helps us write documents such as the one you are currently reading, it helps us obtain knowledge through the internet, and it helps us entertain ourselves with games, movies, and music. But the computer can also have side effects, to our behavior, and even to our appearance. Some children get so entangled in this technology that their eating and sleeping habits change and along with their behaviors. Not just on the computer, even just playing on gaming platforms such as the Xbox or the PS3 or even iPods, they can all change the way we eat, sleep, and behave. While children play on computers or gaming platforms, they get so involved that they begin to avoid eating and sleep later to play longer, but the games they play really can change their usual behavior, shooting games or fighting games can make them more violent, strategy games can make them more strategic (slightly), and racing games can make them aggressive drivers, it all depends on how much you play and how addicted you become. But gaming can also lead to a loss of physical activity, when someone is addicted to a game, they refrain from leaving the house until they reach a certain ‘achievement’, until they win a race or even until they ‘die’ in the game, this behavior can cause us to gain weight and/or become obese because we also begin snacking more instead of eating proper meals and we stop exercising often.

I’m not saying technology is bad, Technology is changing the way we live, changing the way we interact, it lets us understand the world better, and it helps us write documents, do our homework, make money, present neat computerized presentations, and even edit documents with others in real-time. But what I am saying is that technology is evolving, to engulf us into different activities. There was a presentation at DICE (a creative design convention) where a design professor had very interesting arguments. He called his presentation, “design outside the box” he said, “Technology changes the way we do things, it’s literally turning our lives into games, who knew that Ford built a car so intelligent that it knew if you were driving efficiently, and would grow a computerized plant around your speedometer” but then he introduced an idea that made the audience think if this was to really happen? He said, “ In the future, we are going to be engulfed in points, in a point system where you get points for eating a healthy cereal, for taking the bus instead of a car, for showing a tattoo which shows ‘ads’ with ‘E-ink’, where you would get points for watching a certain advertisement on TV or walking or biking to work.” He made me think, is this really going to happen? Well if it does, it’s going to completely change the way we live, we will be engulfed in a game, and a computerized game not just the ‘problem solving’ game that we call life but a game for points, full of achievements to win. We will stop eating our favorite food because we wouldn’t be getting points for them and not buying certain things because we won’t get points for them.

To conclude, I believe in technology, I completely support it, but only to an extent. I say go ahead and enjoy what technology has to offer, learn about the world we live in, entertain yourself and engulf in it. Just until it doesn’t affect your appearance or the people around you and especially the person in you. Think about it like this, we as humans made machines we can’t let machines make us who we are.