Love at First Site: My Relationship with Technology

When I was a very young child, the world of computers fascinated me. The idea of the internet and all that it could offer just sort of astounded me. It seemed that anything was possible. Not only the internet, but media in general. I watched so much television that I'm surprised it didn't melt my eyes out of my skull "Raiders of the Lost Ark" style. I listened to the radio news and NPR with my Dad in the car and went to see a lot of movies with my mom. I grew up with media influences all around me. They are inescapable unless you live in an isolated area, I think. But even catching a soundbite of news or a clip of the game or an advertisement before a silly cat video on Youtube, you are being exposed to the media. 

I don't think I can go a day without quoting a movie or referencing something on the internet or television. We human beings have fallen in love with television, radio, the internet, our cellphones, iphones. We're hopelessly devoted to our technology because it makes our lives easier, more interesting, more entertaining. I think we human beings very much like to take in and process information and to gather knowledge and this is what all forms of media provide us.

All of these forms of media make it possible to understand not only what is happening in our own backyard, but halfway across the globe. I engage daily in "the global village," Marshall McLuhan's idea that the world has become so connected by technology that the world has shrunken into a "village" where thoughts and ideas can be expressed in seconds from around the world. When I am on Facebook, I am engaging in "the global village." I've made friends with a Peruvian artist over the internet. Though the distance between us is great, we can carry a conversation over the internet. 

At this day and age, media is always with us and even on us. Right now, you may very well have a cell phone, an iphone, or some other device in your pocket, your purse or by your side. The technology that we have now may act as an extension of our own bodies. Our cell phones, iphones, ipods, etc. act at our eyes, ears, minds and voices to just about any place in the world that we are interested in making contact with. 

I think that I am technological determinist rather than a structuralist. I think that technology causes change. Changes the way we communicate and think. Changes in technology pave the way for futures changes and it just continues on forever.

I love technology. I consume so much information provided to me by modern technology that I don't even know if I notice it anymore. It has just become so much a part of my daily life, that I think sometimes I may take it for granted. Technology is just about any media has fascinated since I was a child and continues to in my adult years. My relationship with technology effects the way I think, the way I communicate, the way I live. I'm in love with it and I look forward to the rest of lifelong relationship.