This essay will address how technology has changed what it fundamentally means to be human, and how the human race, due to this new technology, is more connected than ever before. Human constructiveness has been demonstrated over and over in recent years, such as when the Haitian earthquake of 2010 hit, news spread faster than the plague and within hours, the Haitian people were already receiving promises of aid from humanitarian groups from across the world. Just as technology is connecting humans to one another, people argue that technology is disconnecting humanity from the real world, that people aren't connecting in the real world, that social skills are taking a downturn. This essay will also explore empathy, and how it affects people.
Technology has changed what being human means, now humans have technology surrounding them at all times. As Sir Ken Robinson put it, "Our children are living in the most intensely stimulating period in the history of the earth. They're being besieged with information and calls for their attention from every platform - computers, from iPhones, from advertising hoardings, from hundreds of television channels" Ken Robinson. This shows that human beings are moving towards technology as the major source of information and entertainment that they use. But as humans move towards technology as a major source of information, new innovations come about, such as Facebook and Twitter, keeping our generation informed. " Technology has, so far, proved more helpful to the human race than hurtful, however it has alienated the human race from one another, promoting contact over electronic sources rather than face to face contact.
Some people say that this new way of communicating is removing empathy from the human race, which is true in some cases, but very untrue in others. This citation, while not from the designated citation list, is from a post on Tumblr showing how some people on the internet are completely removed from feeling any repercussions for their actions that would happen in real life. (Sorry, I have to link this because it involves pictures and stuff, also this is about the pictures, not about the actual post, like I agree with what the post has to say, not the pictures.) Rape Culture Photoset. This is what technology has done to some of this generation, technology makes it so they don't feel the repercussions of what they're saying. This however doesn't mean that this generation is completely hopeless, this generation is more creative and more empathetic than any other that came before them, in many ways, this is due to the new technology presented to them. (PressPausePlay quote here). This generation will end up inheriting the world, and because they grew up with social media and other forms of mass communication. By allowing this generation to flourish with technology at their fingertips, the past generation has created a generation of people who are technically savvy, and therefore empatheticlly savvy. "We have the technology that allows us to extend the central nervous system and to think viscerally as a family not just intellectually. When that earthquake hit Haiti and then Chilli, but especially Haiti, within an hour the Twitters came out and within two hours some cell phone videos, YouTube; and within three hours the entire human race was in a emphatic embrace coming to the aid of Haiti." Jeremy Rifkin. This citation shows that this generation will spread word of a disaster within hours of it happening and aid will be sent withing days, showing that this generation is more empathetically in tune with the rest of the world than ever before.
As technology evolved throughout the ages, progressing from farming advances, to economic advances, to mathematical advances, to scientific advances, many groups have tried to impede it, while many others advanced it, leading up to the modern era of technology, computers, the world wide web, phones and many other genius inventions, this era has seen the most advances in the shortest period of time ever. This is put into words by Jeremy Rifkin. "Empathy is the invisible hand. Empathy is what allows us to stretch our sensibility with another so that we can cohere in larger social units. To empathise is to civilise; to civilise is to empathise. With forager/hunter societies communication only extended to the local tribe in shouting distance. Everyone over in the next mountain was the alien other. So empathy only extended to blood ties. When we went to the great hydraulic agricultural civilisation script allowed us to extend the central nervous system and to annihilate more time and space and bring more people together, and the differentiation of skills and the increasing selfhood not only led to theological consciousness but empathy now extended to a new fiction. And that is instead of just associating with one's blood ties we detribalise and began associations based on religious ties. So a new fiction Jews start to see all other Jews as extended family and empathise with Jews. Christians start to see all other Christians as extended family and empathise with Christians. Muslims the same. When we get to the 19th Century the Industrial Revolution and we extend markets now to larger areas and create a fiction called the Nation State, and all of a sudden the Brits start to see others in Britain as extended family; the Germans start to see Germans as extended family; the Americans as Americans. There was no such thing as Germany; there was no such thing as France these are fictions, but they allow us to extend our families so that we could loyalties and identities based on the new complex energy communication revolutions we have that annihilate time and space. But if we have gone from empathy in blood ties to empathy in religious associational ties to empathy based on national identification is it really a big stretch to imagine the new technologies allowing us to connect our empathy to the human race write large in a single biosphere" Jeremy Rifkin. This shows that, as a race, humans have evolved throughout the ages to make use of new ways to contact one another and new ways to bond together, such as religion.
People use technology to connect with one another throughout the world everyday, and more and more people are coming into the social web everyday. The connectivity of the world is increasing everyday, people are more and more empathetic everyday and the world benefits from that.
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