Technology and It's Affect on Society

 One Simple Question:

This video made me really reflect on how entertainment for young children has been changing not only as described in the video, but just between my own childhood and my young cousin’s childhood. As a child and even into my early teens my favorite thing to do was to play with dolls. I would create entire stories with my dolls as the actors, and would be able to act it out for hours on end every day. There was even a time when I was at my grandmother’s house and she had to check in on me because I hadn’t left the playroom in four hours. But now every time I go to my grandmother’s house and she is watching my baby cousins, they are constantly watching YouTube videos, wanting to play games on her phone and the occasional game of tag. I didn’t even get my first phone until I was 13 years old and it was a slide up keyboard phone. Now my 6 year old cousin has an iPhone. Granted it’s an older model, it’s still odd to me. But this has been given to my baby cousins due to convenience. They can have their own phones to play games, to call mom and dad if they need them, etc.

Hijacked Family Dinner:

I thought this was a very funny and interesting video and concept. We have quite the odd set of circumstances in our household where we don’t even eat dinner in the same rooms half of the time. We will often grab dinner and go to eat it in our separate rooms. Even when we do eat altogether in the dining room we tend to text people and show each other videos while we eat and chat. I think we could manage to spend dinners without phones or tv and other devices. However, there very well could be people out there who feel they can’t and would genuinely throw a tantrum or get angry if denied access to those things even for a few moments in their day. Though I think this stems from a need to feel in control rather than technology taking over our minds or anything of the sort.

Gene-Edited Baby:

There has been a lot of debate about gene-editing anyway. It is considered to be unethical due to the fact that genealogists would be tampering with something that is generally considered to be a predetermined set of genes. However, it is generally for admirable reasons such as preventing disabilities, disorders and diseases. In this case the researcher’s goal was to prevent infants from obtaining the HIV virus through the infected parent(s). I tend to go back and forth on this issue because I would love it if technology could cure disorders and terrible ailments like cancer and AIDS. I can see why the ethical issues are put to the forefront as well because of all the unknowns about tampering with a human’s DNA without knowing all the possible consequences of our actions. Technology is amazing in the sense that this type of research can be done, but do we trust it enough to do more good than harm?

25 Inventions of 2016:

It is so surreal to look back on these inventions from 2016 because I noticed when some of these were coming out during that time. I thought it was so cool they were coming out with more realistic looking Barbie dolls and wireless headphones. It’s weird to think that was only in 2016! Also some of these I never knew were actual inventions like the foldable helmet. That is so odd, but I kind of see why people would want it so I can’t say it’s unnecessary.

HIV Vaccines:

I approve much more of trying to find a vaccine for HIV than the gene-modifications. I think it is mainly because of the ethical concerns that would be less present for a vaccine because people would have the option to take it or not and it won’t end up affecting an unborn life, but rather already living and consenting individuals. I also think it would just be all around easier to accomplish and see more definite results a lot sooner.

Millennials and Technology:

I think the thing that surprised me the most in this article was that people from the Silent Generation use cell phones and the internet and such. But a lot of the other information provided just seemed to be almost common knowledge. I think one thing that will change over time will be the positive versus negative views of the internet and technology as a whole. Right now the older generations only recently gained access to the ever changing technology that surrounds the millennial generation and generation z. Therefore they might be more critical of the potential benefits of these technologies because they didn’t need them when they were growing up. As Millenials and Gen Z’s grow into the older generation they will become more accepting of our current technology and the internet as a positive influence on society, but maybe not anything beyond that.