Technology Creating a Better World?

Advancements in technology are supposed to make our lives easier. The time it takes for us to travel to another destination continues to shorten. Computers continue to advance at a rapid pace. Communicating with family and friends from another country has become easier than ever. It would seem as if everything is perfect. However, that is not the case at all. The irony of it all is that inventions that were supposed to make us connected to people close to us have actually had the opposite effect. Devices such as mobile phones, tablets, television, and laptops are just a few inventions that have us obsessed over them during our free time. With the advent of social media, we have become more engrossed in our own little world. People spend more time on social media and gadgets than actual face to face interactions between human beings. Two writers attempted to explain this phenomenon in their essays.

“The Flight from Conversation”, by Sherry Turkle, explains how and why people are shying away from real life conversations because of gadgets and the internet. “The Multitasking Generation”, by Claudia Wallis, explores the same subject, but she goes a step further and discusses a more serious problem: Multitasking is actually making us more distant and less efficient. Turkle and Wallis share the same attitude in the direction that society is heading towards. The examples both authors use overlap each other’s. However, Wallis’ essay presents a sense of urgency and seriousness that Turkle’s essay does not.

One of the main similarities in both essays is how each author describes people’s obsession with technology and social media. Both authors open the essays describing the setting in homes these days. Turkle opens her essay by saying “At home, families sit together, texting and reading e-mail” (Turkle 2). Wallis opens her essay by describing the scene at the Cox household. Her second paragraph describes it best by saying “By all standard space-time calculations, the four members of the family occupy the same three-bedroom home in Van Nuys, Calif., but psychologically each exists in his or her own little universe” (Wallis 2). Members of society have been so entranced with keeping in touch with everyone, that we often neglect the people closest to us. We would rather post pictures, write comments, and video chat with other people than our own family members (Wallis 14).

In addition to the obsession over cyber-space connection, the bond from sharing quality time with your family seems like a distant thing in the past. The “bond” that the internet provides is superficial compared to the one a person can build with people. Wallis best describes this when she says “If you’re IMing four friends while watching That ‘70s Show, it’s not the same as sitting on the couch with your buddies or your sisters and watching the show together” (Wallis 18). Turkle explains this by stating “We’ve become accustomed to a new way of being ‘alone together.’ Technology-enabled, we are able to be with one another, and also elsewhere, connected to wherever we want to be” (Turkle 4). Technology has given people a false sense of being together when they are really not.

Another common theme that the two essays share is that technology and social media has made us less patient. Turkle attributes this due to the lack of face-to-face conversations. She argues “Face-to-face conversation unfolds slowly. It teaches patience. When we communicate on our digital devices, we learn different habits…we start to expect faster responses” (Turkle 14). Wallis explains this by showing us how occupied we are. We now have the constant need to keep ourselves occupied because we can’t stand to be doing nothing. Wallis says the need for people to multi-task has reached new heights. She states “…the phenomenon has reached a kind of warp speed in the era of web-enabled computers, when it has become routine to conduct six IM conversations, watch American Idol on TV and Google the names of last season’s finalist all at once” (Wallis 12). People no longer have the patience to concentrate and focus on one thing at a time.

While there are definitely similarities in the two essays, the differences are apparent as well. First of all, the tone used in each essay is different. The tone that Turkle uses lacks the sense of urgency that Wallis’ essay has. Turkle does not delve deeper into the physiological effects multitasking can have on people. Instead, she explains the main reason people yearn to be connected is because we do not want to be lonely. People are more afraid than even of being alone in this world. It is this fear that drives us to constantly reach for our phones or computers. This is definitely a contrast to the style Wallis used.

The tone used in Wallis’ essay is of a dire and more serious one. She not only explains the causes for the constant need to multitask and staying connected, but the effects of these behaviors. The implications of multitasking at a young age could hinder not only the social growth of a person, but the physiological growth of the person as well. Constant multitasking can actually make a person perform tasks slower than usual. Despite the illusion that multitasking enables a person to accomplish more, the opposite could be true. Wallis states, “When people try to perform two or more related tasks either at the same time or alternating rapidly between them, errors go way up, and it takes far longer” (Wallis 22). David E. Meyer, director of the Brain, Cognition and Action Laboratory at the University of Michigan adds “The toll in terms of slowdown is extremely large” (Wallis 22).

Interestingly, Wallis ends her essay by saying technology is not the main problem. She explained the importance of the things that we neglect that causes most of the problems. People forget to do normal tasks such as converse, have lunch or dinner together, and simply not even having any confrontations like people normally do.

In the end, both essays used the same topic to explore different issues. It shows us we can look at things from different points of views. It is important to remember that the same information could be used for different ways. Sherry Turkle used technology and social media to explain our desire to cure the feeling of loneliness, while Claudia Wallis used the same information to warn us of more serious implications such as losing the ability to focus and eventually slowing down at a more rapid pace. Despite the differences in both essays, one thing we can all agree on is that we have become too attached to our cell phones and social media! It would be beneficial to everyone to take a brief moment and read both essays. This is easier said than done because many people have become accustomed to talking in 140 characters or less!

Works Cited List
Turkle, Sherry. “The Flight from Conversation”. Reading Critically, Writing Well. Ed. Rise B. Axelrod, Charles R. Cooper, and Alison M. Warriner. 10th ed. New York: Bedford St. Martin’s, 2013. 344-337. Print. Wallis, Claudia. “The Multitasking Generation”. Reading Critically, Writing Well. Ed. Rise B. Axelrod, Charles R. Cooper, and Alison M. Warriner. 10th ed. New York: Bedford St. Martin’s, 2013. 385-396. Print.