Are we becoming slaves to technology?

Slavery implies that one is bound inescapably in servitude to another. The topic of this essay therefore debates whether human beings are in the service of technology.

To become overly dependent on something is not the same as becoming a slave to it. A parallel drawn here could be the food cycle of nature. Just because blue whales feed on plankton does not imply that they are slaves to those tiny little things that float about in the water. Everything in nature depends on other things for its survival. This ‘resource dependency’ is universal in scope and application and calling everything higher up the dependency list a slave to the things which it succeeds would be incorrect. Call it heavily dependent, but not slavery.

 The role of technology in our lives has been ever changing. The technology I use, for example, could not have been dreamt in the wildest dreams of my grandparents. It is human nature to be scared of change, and the fact that such the topic of this essay is such a common one for discussion is nothing but the reflection of ignorance at a certain level mixed with this fear. This fear, though rational in the eyes of the people who feel it, does nothing but hinder progress and growth. Human nature, however, is something that takes a lot of effort from a lot of people to change, so it would not be fair to put any blame on these people.

Everything we do is dependent on technology. When man invented fire, it was the cutting edge of technology. When man made the first wheel, technology progressed. Fast forward about ten thousand years and we have the Industrial Revolution, and the great Quality and Information Technology Megatrends. Technology is omnipresent.

Though we are heavily dependent on living life the way we do on technology, we are definitely not slaves to it. Not any more than when we invented fire, that is.