Technological invasion is no longer strange for our society. Media used to present technology as a part of the social growth and improvement. Nowadays technology has become rather a threat for our society because of the massive technological incensement. The media itself has become virtual and ‘unreal’, only a few original media aspects have survived such as print press and magazines, the rest has become technological. Media has lost its previous duties, such as to inform the public in an objective and natural way. Nowadays the society is influenced and motivated for technology in almost every aspect of the media, may it be advertisements about technology, news, shows, stories or the actual practicing of technology through media.
Technology has always played an important role in human life. Ever since the times when humans were using such primitive objects as stick and rock, but this was a type of technology to survive during the Stone Age. Nowadays technology was invented to make our life easier but it developed extremely fast, and now it is almost controlling our life. For example, the advertisements that are presented to us every day, every minute seem normal to us. We do not even recognize anymore how much they influence our life’s and our thinking, because of the advertisements we build our opinions, we buy things and spend money for objects we do not even need because we have been influenced by media in our sub consciousness.
An object created through technological invasion is the robot. The word Robot, has first occurred in the year 1920, in a play written by the Czech writer Karel Capek, called the R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots). This play is about a world, where robots are first created to help and simulate people, make their life easier, but at the end robots form their own group and begin a war against humans. (capek.misto). Even though this is a play based on imagination, we can see the idea about a threat and danger rising from technological development and inventions such as robots, which will be so intelligent in the future that they would reach the level of abilities of a human beings. This example can be related to the paragraph above: first technology was developed to make human life easier but now it has become controlling and rather a threat.
Is media portrayal of technological development a method through industrialization and automation, which will, when implied to the society, lead to freedom of people and no more need for manual work? Decrease of manual work, less working hours, better and easier work conditions and everything automatic, these were the main ideas and targets of technological development in terms of work that appeared often during the last years in the media. However, already in the past, with the first modernizations and automation protests have started, as people were afraid to loose their jobs, when robots and machines were taking over their place. In today’s world, due to the influence of mechanization, there is less manual work than in the past, however more soul working is demanded from employees and positions of manual workers have changed, since less workers are needed with the help of technology. We can sat that technological development does not lead to the freedom of individual, but on the other hand to the creation of new pressure and social control, which is again a negative invention ‘supported’ by the media.
The mass media and the technological development is having greater speed every year and since society is unable to keep up, there is no control over such development. This creates many threats and potential dangers as technology is uncontrollably taking a more and more powerful position in our society while being supported by the media, and the people are becoming more and more dependent on technology, without even realizing it.
Works Cited
• Zunt, Domenik. “Who did actually invent the word "robot" and what does it mean?”. 1998-2004.
Ceska Verze. 6 Jan. 2008
http://capek.misto.cz/english/robot.html
• Marson, Ingrid. “Media and technology 'won't merge'”. 2 Jan. 2008.
• http://news.zdnet.co.uk/itmanagement/0,1000000308,39251719,00.htm
• Norma, Don. “Robots in the Home: What Might They Do?” Don Norman’s jnd.org.
25 Nov. 2007
http://jnd.org/dn.mss/robots_in_the_h.html
• Transhumanismus. “Ecological Challenge: Technological Development is Becoming a Threat”. Transhumanism. 21 Jan. 2005. Transhumanismus. 26 Nov. 2007
http://www.transhumanismus.cz/blog.php?time=050124
• Smolikova, Dagmar. “The Biggest Wealth”. 24 Nov. 2007 Sedma Generace.
http://www.sedmagenerace.cz/index.php?art=clanek&id=279
• Svrsek, Jiri. “Nanotechnology and Social Transformation”. 28 – 29 Sept. 2000.
Natura. 24 Nov. 2007.
www.natura.baf.cz/nature/2005/1/120050103.html
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