Technology is the science of arranging life so that one need not experience it.

If there is technological advance without social advance, there is, almost automatically, an increase in human misery.

The new electronic interdependence recreates the world in the image of a global village

Only science can hope to keep technology in some sort of moral order.

Our technological genius has got us into trouble, but it is also the way we will escape our problems

Central thesis I had in mind: Life is what happens in between the plans you make. Technology kills spontaneity – and it kills humanity too. Part of societal development is the overcoming of obstacles and the unexpected. Technology, although it makes life easier, makes it vapid too.

(I took 4 extra minutes to write this, and the other piece, than the GAMSAT time gives)

Technology is a modern indulgence that seeks to increase our productivity, to give us more time for leisure and pleasure because society views labour as a burden and a subtraction from self-actualisation. It removes obstacles, and allows us to live our lives in a slipstream past the hard and uncomfortable aspects of the every day. But discomfort is necessary. It is how we grow, and change – not only as individual human beings, but as a collective societal unit. As in evolutionary progression, nothing will change without pressure and the many technologies of today are the quick-release valves of a pressure cooker that encapsulates our entire world, that ultimately prevent us from going over an edge of new enlightenment and becoming different.

Technology drains from anthropological development to feed its own – it parasitically, vampirically injects fangs of sillicon and plastic wiring into our brains to extract what it wants and paralyses us with assurances that technology is good for us, that it improves society and will make us better humans, so that we stay still and allow our power to be stolen from us.

We are assured that digital connection is equivalent to interaction in the flesh, that emotions and love can pass through two glass screens unchanged and everything is the same despite the distance – when it is nothing but a sedating substitution for ‘seeing’ someone without actually having to make an effort. It has never been easier for us to send superficial sympathies to friends who have experienced losses through pixels, and we elect to do that because it is an uncomfortable and difficult task to hold someone as they cry and sit with the hopelessness and realisation that you cannot do anything about the pain – that you are there only to absorb it. We no longer have to touch the people around us, to interact deeply with life and other people because we can assauge our guilt of living like porcupines by telling ourselves we interacted with people today when all we did was stare at a machine for several hours.

Technology isn’t evil. It is our natural desire to escape discomfort and we chose to use social media and phones to construct a bubble of glass around each and every one of us – where we can see others, roleplay living and loving them, but never have to truly touch someone else lest they hurt us. I fear how weak our skin and how hard our hearts have become, when they are the only things that can protect us when our bubbles inevitably shatter in response to adversity, and all that anyone does around you is wave and say that they would love to help, but cannot muster the effort of breaking out of their own. It is scary being vulnerable, and technology allows us to opt-in or opt-out of it. If only we realised what else we have chosen to miss out on.