Technology: does access equal knowledge?

Technology, as it continues to seep its way into our lives and minds, has always attracted skepticism. In recent years, however, with the rise of the Internet and the “wired” culture it has produced, critics have developed entirely new arguments warning against the downsides of technology.

With the Digital Age, we now have access to worlds of information and knowledge through the Internet that past generations would have found inconceivable to condense. However, the accessibility of knowledge does not necessarily equate to its consumption.

As Generation Y transitions into adulthood, it can easily be seen that the attention of our culture’s youth is not directed toward technology’s intellectual benefits, but rather its social capabilities. The power of social networking has reached unbelievably large proportions, and in recent years, its usage has begun to transcend the high school and college-aged demographic.

Social media like Twitter and Facebook, allowing its users to constantly update their friends and followers with their current thoughts and activities, endow our culture’s youth and beyond with delusions of self-importance.

These media seem to devour our time more and more, leaving the Internet’s virtues, such as its material that promotes learning and personal growth, in very low demand. The way technology has manifested itself not only feeds our drives for social interaction and feelings of self-worth, but also the very format of digital media has begun to change our way of thinking.

The Internet allows the practice of multi-tasking to reach new extremes, giving us the capability to indulge in various forms of media all at once. Many would argue that this capability is leading to the gradual shortening of our attention spans. The brief style of writing that now characterizes things like cyber blogs is doubtless a symptom of this phenomenon.

In this way, technology allows us to gorge ourselves in distractions, be it for the sake of self-promotion or socialization, and in result, damages our ability to focus.

With our attention spans diminishing and our need for constant distraction and entertainment increasing in accordance with the rise of a digitally saturated culture, one can easily reach the conclusion that technology may not always be beneficial.

-Morgan