In the past ten years, society has been increasingly dependent on technology. The cell phone, once a gadget of those in the financial sector, can be found on practically everyone between the ages of 16 and 65. Some people don’t even have landlines, almost unheard of prior to 2003. Recently, I was watching a first season episode of Mad Men, a television show which takes place in the early 1960s. It was the episode where one of the characters goes to the bakery to pick up his daughter’s birthday cake, but decided not to go back home. His wife and the adult party guests were worried about him as they were unable to reach him. This is not likely to happen in 2008 – unless someone decided not to take his or her phone along or decides not to pick up.

There are good and bad points about this. The good thing is that we can be reached wherever and whenever. The bad is also because we can be reached wherever and whenever. Some people believe that Blackberrys, cell phones and computers have caused the traditional family unit to disappear. Parents are now working longer hours and not spending time with their children. Family dinners are no longer as common as they used to be. It is no wonder that so many kids are not as healthy as they should be. Parents are fixing quick dinners for them, meals that aren’t necessarily healthy. In addition, because families aren’t eating together as often, proper table manners are not practiced by today’s young. Finally, traditional communication skills have deteriorated. Because so many teens have cell phones, they spend more time texting their friends, developing a completely new language, than writing in traditional form. Handwriting will likely become an art form, rather than something one does on a daily basis.

Of course, the dependence on technology can be a good thing. For one, we can look information up fairly quickly, whereas in the past, one had to make a trip to the library, find out whether the book is even in circulation and then leaf through the book to find the information one is looking for. Today, it’s just a quick search online. News is released quicker as well. You can put up a headline and brief information about what’s happening very quickly. Television and radio require more time to assemble crew. The Internet also encourages people to read, while television and radio encourages people to be lazier as comunication is only one way, with the audience passively receiving on the other end. Before the dawn of radio and television, one had to wait until stories were printed on paper. News was not as fresh as it is today.  In addition, online publications save companies a lot of money.  Prospere Magazine, for example, would not have existed without the Internet.

So while many people long for the old days when things were simpler, a time when families ate and spent time together, a time when people didn’t “speak” Cyberese and wrote long hand, one must not forget that technology does make things quicker, easier and more affordable for us.  We can reap the benfit of both worlds by doing more “old fashioned” things such having family dinners and playing board games rather than going to the gym alone.