Final Blog: Technology and Me

    I would say that my relationship with media and technology is an interesting one. Growing up my dad and I would often bond through watching movies and playing video games together. As I got older technology was able to provide a creative outlet where I could express myself through a number of online programs, and in doing so I realized that I wanted to go down a career path that had a focus on technology. I have worked jobs where I have had to operate large machinery such as amusement park rides, but I have also had the chance to look at the broad effect of technology by doing market research for Intel’s Internet Of Things Group.

    Despite my more favorable impression of technology, my online footprint I would say is actually fairly small. While I do technically have both a Facebook and Instagram, I post at best on an annual basis, and I mainly use them as ways to directly message others, or find information about local events going on. Even on more personal apps such as Snapchat, I almost never post anything for large amounts of people to see, and mainly use it as an extension of texting. This is not to say I am anywhere off the grid, as my current job as an online journalist has me constantly posting news articles under my name making my online presence much greater than it used to be.

    I do have some important thoughts regarding the role of technology in our life. In my opinion our relationship to technology is the same as cavemen first discovering fire. The internet and associated technology is new to us and can be scary and dangerous as it paves the way for new problems we as a species have not dealt with throughout our history, such as data and privacy leaks, and because of that we as a species will have to adapt to these changes it will cause. Technology is also unpredictable, while we may have some vision of where technology will be ten years from now, the reality is that technology is advancing so fast that it is impossible to know for sure. But just like fire, now that technology has grown and spread it is almost impossible to stop. Whether we like it or not, we are heading towards an automotive tech driven era, and there is nothing we can do as individuals to stop it.

    This does not mean that I think that technology is evil and is bringing about the end of society, but what it is bringing is change. The innovations and applications associated with technology will change us as a species and how we approach different problems, potentially leading to breakthroughs such as an end to cancer or world hunger. But change is not inherently good or bad, it is just different. Progress has always been a mixed bag in all industries, for example the invention of the automobile has had tremendous impacts on how connected the world has become and how businesses ship and receive products, but it has also caused major damage to our environment and has caused hundreds of thousands of people to lose their lives in accidents. I personally am someone who is interested in seeing where progress will take us, and am morbidly curious whether technology will eventually lead to an interconnected utopia, or an oppressive dystopia.