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| Yes | 74% | 91 votes | Total: 123 votes | |
| No | 26% | 32 votes |
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Add to FavoritesThere is no denying that technology is making us lazy. There is a universal trend toward mediocrity, with too many people becoming satisfied with just getting by, rather than striving for excellence. There is more value placed on the quantity of things that we can do, rather than quality of our output. It is a sad state of events and is the reason why bridges fall down and planes fall out of the sky. It is the reason why carbon offset credits are considered an effective way to save the planet.
Certainly, there are many perks and positives to having such an unprecedented array of tools that are so readily available for relatively little expense. They are used to save lives, bring clean water to places that have none, allow people to have a voice where they are being suppressed and denied basic human rights. Technology is clearly a great thing. It has the capacity to automate redundant tasks and provide endless hours of entertainment. It negates the need to leave the home, the room, the chair we sit in.
Back in the summer of 2003 the entire Eastern sea board went without electricity. People panicked! They had no idea how to exist without something that powered so many of the things now considered essential. Some, did the truly unusual: They gathered everything that could go bad in their fridge and that of their neighbors, went outside, fired up the barbecue, hibachi, and the crank radio and had a picnic. When the power came back on, they rushed back inside and went back to surfing the net and watching TV.
Nobody is saying that we are now lazy because we do not have to go out to the well for fresh water each day, or stand in line at the market early each morning because there is no such thing as a refrigerator. We can warm up food in seconds using microwaves and stand in the middle of a forest and call for help on a PDA. We can call the police from half a world away because somebody we don't even know is crying out for help in a chat room. Sure, there are benefits.
But, let's be realistic. Most people do not simply use technology for essential needs. They have turned it into life sustaining tools and avoid tasks and chores by flicking a switch or pressing a button. Society has become helpless when unplugged. We used to have to get up and go to the library to research projects for school. Now, libraries are depleted of truly useful volumes. Even librarians point to the web as the place to go instead of aisle EE 647 - 749. Anybody who has ever tried to find information online should be able to attest to how easy it is to get distracted and find far more and far less than what was aimed at. While we are on the topic, the quality of information put out there is not the same. Much of it is unreliable and unverified. Anybody can publish anything and we are all too busy multitasking to dig deep enough to get true insight.
Learn more about this author, Freyda Tartak.
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No
Is technology making us lazy? It's a common question asked frequently by all types of people, from doctors, to government agents, and of course, concerned parents. This question is in a way, totally subjective, and depends heavily on one's definition of "lazy", which for me, when used to describe a person, simply means that the person rather do something easy, but relaxing, than something possibly difficult, but rewarding. Technology can help us in both. For example, a lazy person can stream videos of stand-up comedians all day long on YouTube, while a productive person can research a topic interesting to him/her.
That being said, I think that most people are not "lazy", especially most of the time. We all have periods of time that we become lazy, which is perfectly normal and healthy, but most of us realize that being productive is ultimately more rewarding than just lounging around. Ultimately, it does depend on the person, because no matter how you look at it, technology opens a door which leads to a forked path. One with various commodities that are "just for fun", and the other which is nothing but productive. Every time we boot up a computer, turn on our cell-phones, take out our mp3 players, turn on the television, or plug in practically any other appliance, we choose the road which we want to go down. Technology itself, is perfectly neutral, it has no preference as to what we do with it, this holds true no matter if we are speaking of the scientific definition of Technology, or the more mainstream definition.
Making the point that technology is totally neutral in it's judgment, or rather, lack thereof, is extremely important to this stance. This is because if we look at it, it becomes obvious that technology opens up the door to many more useful tasks, than it does to useless ones. It can also make us more willing to do tasks that we might otherwise want to ignore. For example, thanks to technology, it is a simple matter of a few keystrokes to send a message across the world. Just 50 years ago, this was a task that required thought, time, and patience. Oftentimes, for practicality's sake, one just wouldn't bother to send said message, technology makes sending that same message a breeze. Try to imagine the world without any tools, and that would ultimately be a world without technology. Now certainly, that wouldn't be a very comfortable place to live, and we couldn't afford to be lazy simply because our survival would depend on it. All the technology that we have today doesn't make us lazy at all, it just gives us more choices. Sure technology takes away the effort you would have to put into things otherwise, but that doesn't mean it makes us lazy, it just makes it easier to complete an otherwise strenuous, boring, repetitive task. Imagine mowing a lawn with scissors versus mowing the lawn with any sort of lawn-mower.
In conclusion, technology doesn't make humans lazy, it makes things easier to do, serving it's original purpose. How we use the technology is totally up to us, and so it simply isn't fair to blame technology for people becoming lazy, that is almost always a personal choice. I believe that blaming technology for laziness is akin to blaming a pen for miss-spelled words. Ultimately, it's the people who decide how to utilize technology, technology does not decide for people how they should use it.
Learn more about this author, Patrick Darski.
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