Media and Popular Culture: Pros and Cons of Technology Essay

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In the essay Can you hear me now? Sherry Turkle describes different approaches to technology and analyzes opportunities and threats of new communication methods. This essay was originally published in They say/ I say with Readings: The Moves that Matter in Academic Writing edited by G. Graff, C Birkenstein, R. Durst. On the one hand, the author argues that new technology has changed the life of modern civilization bringing new ease of communication and interaction. On the other hand, Turkle states that modern technology and new media are transforming society, its way of life, and communication patterns. The five arguments discussed by Turkle are the new state of self, lost time, tethered adolescence, discontents of the virtual environment, and split attention. Society is overly dependent on technology paying more attention to the advantages and opportunities of these technologies rather than their harmful and negative impact on their lives.

On the one hand, new media and technology allow global society to view and understand political changes and conflicts in these countries and respond to global violence and misbehavior of some nations. Personally, I agree with Turkle that: “We live in techno-enthusiastic times, and we are most likely to celebrate our gadgets”. In the Internet era, we can all read first-person reports from all sides of the argument. Technology improves communication between people and makes their life easier and more pleasant. It frees society from waiting for a morning newspaper or evening news. Technology allows people to find news online and read any information from all over the world. More fundamentally, new technology posited a universal network of individuals connected and communicating and sating individual needs and desires through the ether. “The new state of self” leads to a new community of people. On the other hand, the author is right that “These days it is easier for people without technical expertise to blend the real and virtual lives” (Turkle). This view is already a common-place descriptor of ‘net heads’, heavy consumers of the new media. Technology connects the center and the periphery and allows people to belong to many communities. It will be fair to admit that communication is a necessary and indispensable part of any person’s life. And in past times communication between people separated by distances was difficult to realize because mails and telephone were the only means of communication in those days. Nowadays due to the development of technologies Internet has become available for almost everyone in the world, and thus such media as videoconferencing appears not only useful but also accessible. This technology includes text, video as well as audio communication in real-time and two-way. Turkle’s idea that technology becomes a culture is true because modern man cannot live and perform effectively without new technologies and new media.

I constantly disagree with the author that we lose our time because of technology. Technology helps us to save time usually spend on routine operations (such as writing a letter, cooking, cleaning, buying, etc.) and travel to a friend. The market is intolerant of time-wasting; there is not enough time to read out-of-date research. So society needs to get closer to technology, needs to be faster and easier in use. It needs to have an interactive relationship with the purveyors of information, of ideas, of retail. It needs to have a long-term strategy for its research. Understandably, digital communication of various types is becoming more and more popular with the development and enhancement of technologies. Thus, it would not be wise to ignore the new technologies and to adhere only to traditional ways of communication.

The author argues that technology changes perceptions and interactions between adolescents. I agree with the statement that: “adolescents naturally want to check out ideas and attitudes with peers. But when technology brings us to the point where we’re used to sharing thoughts and feelings instantaneously” (Turkle). Modern people are overly dependent on technology using it in daily routines. The increasing role of technology in modern life is explained by its deterministic role in production. Since everyone depends on others in the technical division, life is threatened by scientific change. Mobile phones and personal computers, modern appliances, and cars simplify our life but make us dependent on technology. Turkle is right stating that: “the virtual life of Facebook or MySpace is titillating” (Turkle). People are overly dependent on technology because they cannot imagine their life without mobile phones and cars; without these devices, many people become helpless and vulnerable in the modern world. Again, Turkle is correct that people prefer to communicate with online others than interact with those “people they are meeting”. The basic assumption states that society is not predestined or otherwise forced to a particular technology. Thus, the way and mode of life are shaped by technological devices.

In sum, the ideas and causes mentioned by Turkle are well-developed and correct as the author evaluates objectively modern technology and its impact on society. As technology advances, people become bound by computers, from large ones handling medical and scientific tasks to microcomputers in cars, home appliances, games, entertainment centers, and everywhere else. Overdependence on technology is explained by the fact that people cannot live and perform well without technology and innovations that enter everyday life.

Works Cited

Turkle, Sh. Can you hear me now? ” in They say/ I say with Readings: The Moves that Matter in Academic Writing by G. Graff, C Birkenstein, R. Durst, W.W. Norton & Co.; 1st PAPERBACK edition, 2008. Print.

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