Running head: TECHNOLOGY LITERATURE REVIEW 1

Technology Literature

Max Dayley

NUAMES
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Technology Literature Review

Introduction

In the 2008 hit film Wall-E a seemingly harmless movie till a HAL clone , known as the

"ship's computer" wanting to destroy a plant, tells the captain "You will survive" The captain

holding the plant which was brought to him to show it was finally time to head back to a

destroyed planet and finally rebuild it tells the computer, "I don't want to survive, I want to

live!", The people of Wall-e got obese and intellectually lazy, due to technology giving every

generation a silver spoon. However, is that how it is in real life?

In our current day and age, we are having the question of a lifetime. What is technology

doing to us, and is it so bad? Technology is put on the pistole every day and judge, and the more

time goes by, the more scholars make articles to question every bit of it or to praise each bit of it.

Furthermore, it is the duty as an academic writer is to write and to join the argument and to put

our voice out too.

The most important topic I would like to focus on is the effects of technology on society

and other social groups within the society. We will also focus on intelligence and physical worth

being tested or altered by technology, the effects of technology on mental health, and, lastly, the

effects of technology on social interactions. We will read about scholars' writings ranging from

people claiming that the mental capacities are drastically decreasing due to technology to others

being pro-technology claiming amazing benefits and what it can do to make a person happier.

Is Our Intelligence and physical worth being tested or altered by technology?

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People throughout the years and being altered in ways that many scholars find that is

altering our intelligence. Nicholas Carr wrote an article about the effects of the internet on our

brains from evidence concocted from mainly personal views. Carr (2008) wrote about how

people are not about to keep their attention on a single object like an article or a book for too

long, or they grow bored and want to do something else. Carr (2008), The man who seems to

popularized this argument during the early part of the 21st century, goes as far as claims that he

even has been afflicted by this same mental changed. It is claimed in the article that this all stems

from a single issue, the internet. The internet is what is making people seemingly having shorter

attention spans due to the wealth of knowledge now available to us. The Human mind has

changed due to this. We liked to know things straight to the point instead of reading a lengthy

article.

People have been finding fear in the innovations of robots taking over jobs. Threatening

their lives and ruining people's incomes. We go into Kevin Kelly's side of why robots should

replace us in workplaces. We go into the past of the repeating part of history, which is when a

new invention or innovation that can affect comes along it gets rid of jobs but still produces new

and better ones. During the industrial revolution, people shifted from mainly agricultural jobs to

factory jobs, which allowed people to get higher-paying jobs and to live better lives.

Nevertheless, automation this time around is taking people's jobs, and innovation is not

producing enough jobs anymore. Kelly (2012) argues that this time around when robots take our

jobs it while allowing us to get better jobs in the long run. He likes to set up a relationship to

show what will happen: A: Jobs that are here today that will be replaced by robots, B: jobs that

are only done by humans because of machines, C: Robots Innovation producing jobs that aren't

imaginable today, D: Jobs that are only capable from humans till innovation can replace them.
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Kelly (2012) likes to argue that now we will all eventually be happy that robots/computers can

replace their old jobs so they can focus on their new jobs.

We have an article that tries to approach the issues brought down by Carr (2008) and

other arguments but while bringing up some of her own. "The Influencing Machine" by Brooke

Gladstone. Gladstone (2011) likes to put into perspective that people like Carr (2008) are like the

people in the past; people who are skeptical of current technology. She brings evidence of people

of the past like the radio, TV, and other revolutionary technology released but, Gladstone (2011)

finds that in the end, people usually prize the past technology when new technology is invented

and replacing the past inventions with innovations. People even saying that the radio was terrible

for people than later on when the TV was released. People praise the radio for allowing the

imagination run while the TV does it all for the people. She tries to explain that in the end, these

technologies being released are just going through the same cycle. She says that we are just

evolving with our technology and changing how we read and think along with it.

The Effects of Technology on Mental Health

The effects of mental health were being tracked down and put in a study to find the

effects of the iPhone to teenagers’ mental health. Jean M. Twenge who wrote “have smartphones

destroyed a generation” takes the view that the Igens’ mental health is being destroyed by the

invention of the smartphone. She believed that the increase in smartphone usage and even the

invention of it caused just dramatic effects on teenage mental health. Twenge (2017) points out

the Igen aren’t going out as often and not trying to become as independent anymore. She brings

up a story about an 11-year-old girl, how she doesn’t want to go out but when she does, she's
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usually with her family. But, there are times when she does go with her friends which happens

monthly. Twenge (2017) points out the difference between her generation and ours. Twenge

(2017) points out that she would always go out and how everyone wanted to become

independent, unlike newer generations. She likes to bring her graphs into the mix. The

conclusion she likes to make is that due to the increase/invention of the smartphone teenagers

depression rates have increased, teenagers have hanged with friends less, teenagers are less

driven to get their license, teenagers have been less active in the dating scene, teenagers are

having less sexual activities, teenagers have a rise in how lonely they feel, and lastly teenagers

are not able to get enough sleep.

In the Article "Taking Away the Phones won't Solve our Teenagers' Problems" By Tracy

A. Dennis-Tiwary. Dennis-Tiwary (2018) Argues against many of the predominant arguments

against cellular use. She attacks studies that try to correlate cell phone use to depression and

anxiety among teens. She believes that there is no prospective longitudinal in these studies; the

studies should be relooked at for their resources to prove their points.

Dennis-Tiwary (2018) does not believe that machines are not to blame for teenagers'

problems. She believes that teenagers are having many more challenges to face than other

generations. Technology is used to escape not to make teenagers worse off. Dennis-Tiwary

(2018) even continues to bring up points that taking away technology will cause worse things to

happen. She believes that we should make smartphones less addictive, but more importantly, we

should try to allocate resources for the rise in mental health issues in the youth today.

The Effects of Technology on Social Interactions

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"The Influencing Machine" By Brooke Gladstone a short novel is talking about the

concerns of technology by addressing the concerns of topics like what current technology is

doing to us and what dangers are going on. However, Don't Panic writes Gladstone (2012), from

the wise words of Douglas Adams; we should not worry about technology. Gladstone (2012)

Brings in concerns of the current technology to us from echo chambers that are made from

people's homophilic tendency to stick to like-minded people are being formed stronger than ever

due to the internet’s widespread. Aswell as Nicholas Carr's article on "Is Google making us

stupid," which is about the internets affection of our attention span and our ability to deep think.

In the end, Gladstone (2012) shows us historical data which helps us align a pattern of thinking

during huge technological breakthroughs during the rise. The historical data which is showing us

herds of information about the people of the past worrying about the new and upcoming

technology from Radio, TV, and Printing Press We see people's concerns from the youth to the

human brain changing for the worse.now in the future we look back as these eras as

revolutionary so what's so different now? Nothing is different now. We are just going through

changes like the past.

The TED talk by Sherry Turkle called "Connected, But Alone?", Sherry Turkle explains

her experience over the years of being a psychiatrist with all of her Anecdotal Evidence. She

finds that people want to present people as what they want to be. Because of the ease of showing

others only what they want to be, the people drew closer to texting, emailing, and posting. Sherry

Turkle brings up that people find people are finding a liking to sociable robots to help fill the

void for people too concerned about loneliness. Sherry, finding it disturbing that people found

sociability in robots. She thought while a woman, whose child is dead, finds comfort in a social
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robot in the form of a baby seal. Sherry thought of this experience as follows "That robot can't

empathize. It doesn't face death. It doesn't know life" (Turkle, 2012, 10:04).

Sherry, an Enthusiast, turn skeptic, focuses on the connection to isolation. She describes

how our attachments are now. However, I’ll put it into words that simplified it better. We are

cars taking parts of other people to allow ourselves to keep on going. Stealing The gas of others

to the hearts replace our own. Because of all this in-depth talk, she starts talking about romance.

Romance is and shall forever be changed due to technology interfering with us all. She tries to

become an optimist, but due to the age, we are far gone.

Conclusions

Through many different topics from a ride range of scholars. Many fighting on one side

or the other on the argument of technologies effect on society. During the time Wall-E was on

the ship. The people were excited to go to the amazing earth and that technology was evil but

some were good. We can see many extremists to moderates opinions on the topic of the

technological war that will forever exist till the day scholars exist no more.

The technological review went through many different aspects of the argument from

talking about the impacts of Social interactions between humans are being affected by

technological innovations and inventions, and the effects of mental health caused by technology,

and lastly Is Our Intelligence and physical worth being tested or altered by technology? Many

topics that split into individual parts.

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References

Dennis-tiwary, T. A. (2018, July 14). Taking Away the Phones Won't Solve Our

Teenagers' Problems. Retrieved from

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/14/opinion/sunday/smartphone-addiction-teenagers-

stress.html.

Turkle, S. (n.d.). Transcript of "Connected, but alone?". Retrieved from

https://www.ted.com/talks/sherry_turkle_alone_together/transcript?language=en

Carr, N. (2018, June 13). Is Google Making Us Stupid? Retrieved from

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/is-google-making-us-

stupid/306868/

Gladstone, B., & Neufeld, J. (2012). The influencing machine Brooke Gladstone on the

media. New York: Norton.

Kelly, K. (2018, August 17). Better Than Human: Why Robots Will - And Must - Take

Our Jobs. Retrieved from https://www.wired.com/2012/12/ff-robots-will-take-our-jobs/

Twenge, J. M. (2018). IGen: why todays super-connected kids are growing up less

rebellious, more tolerant, less happy -- and completely unprepared for adulthood*: *and

what that means for the rest of us. New York: Atria International.