Is technology turning us evil?

[Brendan]

Interesting article I found today about Gen Y's

Gen Ys blame technology for their foibles | NEWS.com.au

here is a quick excerpt from the article;

Young Aussies may come in for much criticism, but it seems that neither we, nor our parents, are ever really to blame for our actions.
Computer games made us lazy, television made us stupid and now websites are making us violent.


At least we're putting the blame where it really lies - technology is out to get us.

The tendency of older generations to assume the worst of new technology is an ancient and familiar dance. First they will dismiss it as serving no practical purpose.

So what do you think, do you really beleive that technology is changing the way we think, or do we just have more places to expose ourselves?

[justinsigns]

At first it was meant to make life easier for us, which to some degree it has.
Now it seems to rule lives from relying on email to playing multiplayer games like WoW or EQ.
I am certainly guilty of the latter.

People are saying the word lol in general conversation and handwriting in sms formats.

How were we or our parents to know what long term effect technology was to have on our lives?

I think it is evil only to those that dont have control over it, it is most certainly a necessary evil in business today.

However, I could be entirely wrong but just my view.

[Slade]

I don't know if technology is purely to blame.. there has always been some sort of violence in the world even before we came exposed and neautrilsed (sp?) to it from the media..

I think the media, police and parents are just looking for an excuse.

[JamesGG]

Hiya,

People, by their very design, are extremely good at two things;

Breeding, and, killing.

Better technologies simply allow us to find more effective and creative ways to do so.

Human nature being what it is, though, also likes to blame something or someone else for failings in immediate society. I don't read too much more into these types of articles. IMO, sociology is an art, not a science.

Cheers

James.

[seopiper]

technology for me contributes great advantages to humans, the problem there is when human lose control over the given technologies that should learn to use it in a wise way. It will turn us evil if will use it in a bad way.

[JakeThomas]

I don't think technology rules our lives, I think we just become accustomed to it.

Sure, if you don't like emails and information overload, start sending letters and reading the newspaper instead.

- Jake

[RyanChadwick]

In my opinion, technology is neutral, it is not inherently good or evil. It is people that use it and have those intentions.

eg. One could make the assertion that email is evil due to email scams etc. Email however is used for good and bad activities. The people on the other end, ie, creating the scams are the ones that have the evil intent and they will have that evil intent with or without email. If email is not available to them they will use other avenues (and indeed they were before email was around).

I think JamesGG is correct in saying that technology is just an enabler of human nature. If you think back to medieval times could you not label peasants with a lot of the same traits we are ascribing to gen Y? Humans and human nature have changed very little, we have only changed the perspective by which we view them.

[urlelove]

I think it's not..

When boredom strike we can always lean on technologies.

It's not actually changing the way we think, but just making us relax a bit. It's in the person if he can control himself in being addicted in computer games or whatever game it is.

[nickiedavedolores]

At first it was meant to make life easier for us, which to some degree it has.
Now it seems to rule lives from relying on email to playing multiplayer games like WoW or EQ.
I am certainly guilty of the latter.

People are saying the word lol in general conversation and handwriting in sms formats.

How were we or our parents to know what long term effect technology was to have on our lives?

I think it is evil only to those that dont have control over it, it is most certainly a necessary evil in business today.

However, I could be entirely wrong but just my view.

i agree with you dude, it depends on how you control yourself and how to use it...

[befree]

It depends on people how they utilize it? It has both positive and negative aspects.