by Patrick Darski

Created on: October 18, 2009

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.

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