'Comfort' technologies detrimental to society
By Josh Fedder
It's pretty nice living in the most technologically advanced country in the world.
The United States was the first country to put a man on the moon. The automobile made its big debut in America when Henry Ford revolutionized car production. Scientists like Robert Oppenheimer and Albert Einstein mastered the atom on American soil.
Inventions and discoveries like these gave the United States the push it needed to be the most influential and the most powerful country on the planet. Advances in science and biotechnology are still a powerful aspect of America's development, but our focus on technological advances is increasingly directed at smaller, cooler and more personal "comfort technologies."
Instead of following advances in stem cell research and health technologies, our scientists tend to focus on the technology available in Bluetooth headsets, iPhones, GPS navigation systems and electric massage chairs -- calves and feet massagers sold separately.
While we rapidly develop technology to fulfill our personal comforts and desires, we put less effort into designing technology that would advance the human species.
Technologies that can advance us include biomedical and stem-cell research and solutions to world hunger and global climate change. While these essential technologies are being researched, they have proven to be difficult to accomplish based on various arguments over whether or not we need them.
Many consider some kinds of stem-cell research immoral, therefore its potential benefits have not been fully discovered. And while feeding the malnourished is an achievable goal, those with the financial means to do so are few and far between. This country couldn't even agree that global warming was actually happening until several years after undeniable evidence was presented.
These technologies face opposition, disinterest and a lack of funding, while comfort technologies such as iPhones, wireless internet and high definition televisions permeate our daily lives. The belief is that our lives just need to be faster and easier.
But let's get real -- no one really needs an iPhone. We can still use cables for our internet, and the image on regular TV still looks pretty sharp.
The level in which comfort technologies have taken over our lives is absurd. Did you know that you can now order a pizza online instead of having to call one in? You don't even have to interact with an actual human being. So many of these technologies replace humans with miles of metal wires and touch screen responders. This technology doesn't advance anyone, it simply makes things easier.
Daily interactions with other people are removed so we can communicate with emotionless machines, creatures devoid of life. Is it any wonder that people living in second and third world countries are much happier than those of us in the United States? I think this is because they value their human interaction more and find the significance in life inside one another instead of inside the comforts of American excess.
Comfort technologies aren't always bad, we just need to use them in moderation and remember that, just because we can access our music library, e-mail and Facebook from our phone, that doesn't mean we need to. Instead of investing all of our energy in comfort technologies, it's time that we refocus to technologies that will truly impact the human race in the long run.
Josh Fedder is a junior psychology major.