As you walk down Broadway you bump into a stranger with their head buried in their smartphones, likewise, you yourself are holding onto an I phone as you both look up and give an unenthusiastic apology as you look back down and continue your walk. Without realizing, slowly but surely, society itself is entering a technological dystopia, one that George Orwell wrote about in his popular non-fiction titles.
As quoted from The Guardian’s article The Tech Insiders who fear a Smart Phone Dystopia: “I don’t know a more urgent problem than this,” Harris says. “It’s changing our democracy, and it’s changing our ability to have the conversations and relationships that we want with each other.” So are technological experts like Harris correct in foreseeing the future? In my opinion, I view the idea of a technological dystopia as a problem that will drastically change the outlook on future generations. It’s actually already begun, if we were to walk into a random middle school classroom almost everyone will be holding a smartphone whilst the teacher is writing on a smartboard. Like it or not, even educational institutes are beginning to rely more heavily on technology to carry out their lesson plans.
Is this an addiction that society has been diagnosed with and is there a way we can diverge from the inevitable path of a tech dystopia? Unlike other addictions, being addicted to your smart device and the internet affects almost everyone in the United States, as well as other countries with access to the internet. The problem is that our society today functions with a huge reliability on technology. If technology were to stop working, the world would be in a stagnant state, filled with confusion and chaos.
How I see it, a tech dystopia is ultimately inevitable. We as a society have developed a notion that technology advancements are a great thing, which they are. For example look at the improvements in medical technology. I believe the majority of us have failed to realize we have become slaves to the tech industry. Demand for tech is higher than ever. People are sleeping overnight on the streets in front of Apple stores for the latest release, and this will not change in the near future. It’s nothing to be too afraid of, but we need to be cognizant of the issues and think about what our options are to manage them.