Assignment 2: Jordan Carroll

Assignment 2: Jordan Carroll

Technology... It's great yet awful. The great thing about it is its ability to make life easier. Anything that could possibly be a burden has some form of technology that's been produced to make it well... easy. Although this is a blessing it's also the cause of modern laziness. Why would we get up to do anything when we can do it all from behind a screen or have some machine do it for us? This applies to not only performing tasks but also communicating. Instead of letters and face to face communication we now have texts and face time. And no, face time does not count as face to face interaction. Yeah it's easier to communicate, but any hint of emotion is gone. Think about. Way back when long hand letters were the norm people actually had to put in effort to communicate. This gave it meaning. This added a personal aspect to communication. Imagine getting a letter in the mail, that someone went to the effort of writing, just for you, knowing they'd have to wait days for a response but also knowing it was worth it. The only person I get real, written, in the mail, paper-and-pen letters from are my 90 year old great aunt Louis who lives in Florida and could not, for her life, work a computer well enough to attempt emailing. I always love her letters though. Every holiday and birthday she sends me a cute little card with a five dollar bill and a nice long note beautifully written in her script-like handwriting. It's something I look forward to every time I get a piece of mail from her. I remember when I was little, before I got a phone. I didn't get Happy Birthday texts from my Aunts and Uncles, I got real cards with their names really written on the bottom, unlike the now too familiar name with a dash (and although they've figured out how to text me happy birthday, they still don't understand I have caller id). Technology has taken all the meaning out of communication. It's so effortless that it's been de-valued. Everything technology touches becomes effortless, and that is not for the better.