Effects of Technology

Throughout the years there has been a rapid rise in technology, giving most people access to a wide variety of resources and tools around the world. The main reason for these inventions are to help everyone connect with one another and collaborate. Charles Seife proposed in “The Loneliness of the Interconnected”, that instead of keeping us connected it has isolated us from reality. Despite having all of this information at our fingertips, we tend to only look at articles, shows, or tweets that support our ideas. Ignoring statements that contradict us even when there are blatant facts proving that what we believe in is wrong. Seife continues to support this by using a wide variety of examples showing some of the extreme cases. Such as the cult that believed that a flying saucer would take them away or the president of South Africa questioning whether HIV caused AIDS. All of them emphasizing how they have been able to find groups of people with the same ideology as them to support their delusion. Seife targets mainly the millennials to understand this problem, since they are the ones who were born in this technological era. They are the ones who have the potential to try to change this behavior by simply being open to more information and looking at both sides of an argument. After that they have the capacity to form their own opinion. Otherwise as a society we will end up going backwards by letting other people spew our thoughts. This is seen on all social media sites nowadays because everyone wants to convince someone else they are right, in order to build up their support group and give themselves power. Selfie does an excellent job showing his audience how technology has affected our opinions or thoughts and even destroyed some people’s lives. Ultimately, he believes that if we all open our ears to the “noise” around us, then we have the potential to use technology in a beneficial way. By looking at the vast array of information that we have to think for ourselves and connect with the world around us.