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Craig Trembirth

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What are the technologies trapping us?

There are a number of advantages to technology, although the side effects include an unsociable society trapped inside there homes. I'm looking into the many ways that modern forms of technology may attribute to this, including:

Online shopping, including the downloading of music and videos, so we no longer visit the High Street or supermarket

Online banking, so we no longer walk to the bank

Social networking, so we no longer talk to our friends in person

The ability to work from home, so we no longer go to the office and interact with colleagues

I would love to hear from you if you can think of other examples of ways in which modern technology is making it easier for us to become this trapped society...

Topics: Appropriate technology Breakdown of Society Future Scenario Internet loneliness
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  • John Smith 30+

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    Oct 3 2012: Why do you feel trapped by technology? If you don't need to go to the bank anymore, doesn't that give you MORE time to spend with your friends? Sure, your employer may catch on and force you to fill your newfound spare time working, but that's not the fault of the technology itself, now is it?
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    W. Ying 10+

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    Oct 3 2012: I think:
    Almost all kinds of new technology trap us and thus make us diseases due to inadaptability.
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    Anna Gower

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    Sep 15 2012: Computer technology may be wiring out brain to do things differently than before. Could this be the same for smartphones. Is the speed of cultural change with the common use of computers and smartphones going to end up trapping us. For example in the future could we discover a side-effect to using smartphones that is detrimental to the health of our brains. I don't know, only time will tell.

    We could make any use of an technological object a trap in our minds. But could our own patterns of behaviour with said technology really be the trap to watch out for. i.e. it stops us from walking, socialising more. We use it to much and forget to eat properly, exercise and socialize for all round health.

    I'm not 100 hundred per cent sure it is the technologies that are trapping us. We do it to ourselves anyway with our mind sets.

    The one thing in technology I think that trapped us is wire, wire based transference of electricity, phone cables etc. It was an important part of human development, laying cables etc. a very practical solution but we have held onto it a lot.
    There is light transference of signals in fibre-optic cables and satellite and wifi signal sending. But could we have developed liquid, sound, transference of energy before wire we might be on a different path culturally.

  • Robert Galway 20+

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    Sep 14 2012: Automobiles. We carry an environment with us and are detached from nature, even when we travel. Human powered traveled method such as bikes, canoes, roller blades, and just walking are subject to laws set in place to make things easy for the mass transportation methods.

    Television. People plan their lives around what is on TV.

    Computers. Millions would go home from work with nothing to do if the computers did not work. They do not even teach manual methods in many industries anymore. I do not believe cursive writing is taught anymore...is it?

    HVAC. We use to change what we did to suit nature's living environment. Now we change our living environment.

    The media has made us afraid of our own shadows and caused us to lose trust in people. Particularly public figures.

    We are expecting to be led through complex processes rather than figure them out.

    Pharmacuetical/Medical All the testing, drugs, and doctors instructions..the waiting... the expense...that saps your quality of life while your alive for the promise of an extra bit of time at the end...maybe?

  • Random Chance 30+

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    Sep 14 2012: Technology isn't entrapping humans.
    Humans are entrapping humans. Always have been.
    Technology was created to free humans from unsafe, boring, monotonous and dangerous labor.

    But, humans use technology to create more profit, at the direct expense of those it lays off because of the technology.
    Like most everything else, it is in the hands of the wrong people, being used for the wrong purposes and these ultimately enslave people by creating inequality, poverty, slavery and then war and death.

    Those are just five needs of any monetary system. Do they fit your needs?
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    Dr.K.Nikhil Reddy kuncharam

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    Sep 13 2012: Technologies reduces manpower where we can see huge unemployment around the globe.
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    Dr.K.Nikhil Reddy kuncharam

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    Sep 13 2012: In 20th century i used to remember Landline telephone numbers but not now because in my mobile I have address book where everyones mobile numbers are stored, this vanishes our memory and reduces IQ .

  • Gross Ryder

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    Sep 12 2012: All technologies, unless they are used for creativity, turn into traps.
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    Feyisayo Anjorin 50+

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    Sep 11 2012: We "Like'' the page of a human rights organization; and we don't do anything else. So we think that warlord in Africa will be arrested or will stop his sinister acts because videos about him went viral on Youtube.
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    James Zhang 30+

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    Sep 11 2012: In the US, in the sense of trapping, one technology would be cars. A lot of people can't go to their jobs without cars. And you can't use the cars without paying for high price gas.
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      Gerald O'brian 50+

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      Sep 11 2012: A car is not a goddamn wheelchair, you lazy f*cks.

    • Lars Mews

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      Sep 11 2012: The other side of that is regions where the people just can get jobs they reach without a car-both is not the best solution, so i think this is not really a point for that list.
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