Mark Joseph P.
Cendana
Economic History – SA
January 17, 2011
The Social Network
a review
Technology shaping our lives
Technology today helps us shape our lives in many ways. It has made our work
easier and more efficient. It has brought us also to our comfort zones – more time for
leisure than working out our stresses for survival. Most probably, it has elevated us to a
world of valuing our time and making most out of it.
When we think of technology, things that come in our minds before would be the
factories that use large and complicated machines to manufacture basic needs and also
wants of men. We could also think of cars and many other forms of innovation in our
transportation that truly cut short our time for more important things to accomplish. In our
homes, we have all the tools that made our house chores easier like kitchen machines and
provided also entertainment for a happy and fulfilling life. Today, we could think of our
handy cellular phones, portable music players and not to forget, the machine that has
delivered all seemingly impossible things to life, the computer and what I call its sidekick,
the Internet, as man’s essential products of technology.
Technology all brought us to a world of smooth sailing life. It has removed a lot of
barriers that hinder us from doing complex things – even our mere human strengths and
intellect had seemed to be provided by technology already.
All these things we know about technology shaping our lives could be seen in the
movie The Social Network. It's a movie about the controversies of founding Facebook and
the Mark Zuckerberg, the founder. But beyond the story of film, it reflects somehow how
computer and the Internet have shaped our lives through time.
In today’s era, a large aspect of technology molding our lives is in the aspect of
communication. If telephones and cellular phones were the best medium we have before for
communication, the Internet nowadays provides us with more and unlimited access to
communication. In many forms it could be, voice messaging wasn’t enough. With Internet,
we could chat with video call. We could make business through formal medium of e-mails to
our clients or do conference calls during meeting. It’s live and on real-time – the value of
our time gets to be at maximized.
In the movie, communication that is utilizing Internet has become even better. It
lives up to what Aristotle mentions that, “man is a social being”. Indeed, Facebook became
a phenomenon that brought our social activities closer to us and to everyone around us. If
technology was created before to address the economic aspect of life, which is to provide
efficiency in our work, it has become even real to us today. Technology now brought the
very personal aspect of our lives available for everyone. That is the mere fact Facebook was
created – to share the very personhood of man to the people whom he or she wanted to
available with. Imagine how Mark Zuckerberg had ingeniously thought of providing a feature
on Facebook where we could share our “status”, photos with comment box, and a profile
that has become our online biodata or identification. All of these lead us to become open to
the world that has been separated apart by distance and bodies of water.
Today, expressing our thoughts and sharing our very own identity had become
easier. Becoming closer to the people we love around the world is not an issue anymore. A
few click on our computer, and then we are able to make almost all things available for all.
Technology shaped our lives by making us free and expressive. Not to mention, it made us
creative and very resourceful. Even business today is done in the Internet. Facebook alone
provides a lot of area where men become not only social being but efficient. From personal
aspect of communicating to our friends, Facebook contributed to our economy by allowing
us to venture on business opportunities and many advocacies. Technology now combines a
lot of man’s life aspects by providing us tools that does not only make us efficient in our
work for the economy but also become better persons in our society. Facebook is a venue
where people share thoughts that are actually a collection of knowledge and ideas essential
in shaping our lives.
Impact of technology – its pros and cons
While researching about the impact of technology to us, I came across this quote:
When the life of people is unmoral, and their relations are not
based on love, but on egoism, then all technical improvements,
the increase of man's power over nature, steam, electricity, the
telegraph, every machine, gunpowder, and dynamite, produce
the impression of dangerous toys placed in the hands of
children."—the diary of Leo Tolstoy (1828 - 1910)1
This quote was part of Philip Atkinson’s paper regarding the failures of technology.
Atkinson’s paper entitled “Technology Making it Worse” mentions that, “technology is the
artificial enhancement of human power”. Technology was supposed to make us stronger and
smarter but it turns out the opposite way. He cited cases where nuclear power terrified and
even killed lives with it is possible uses. On the other hand, he reiterated also that,
“improved cleverness and flexibility of our machines have caused social chaos and economic
stagnation” (October 2010).
Indeed, technology is not all about improving our lives. Technology has also its
drawbacks. With all its products, it provided men tools not only for construction but also for
destruction. Weapons of mass destruction for instance are some products of technological
advancement that caused trouble to our society.
Today, we don’t have to decipher that guns could kill people’s lives. It is given since
they are made for that purpose. However, we face more negative impacts on technology
that we had thought have improved our lives because of so many benefits it gives to us. For
instance, TV’s and radios were made as a communicating tool but because of the
patronizing entertainment it provides to us, people become addicted to it. In some cases,
Children spend a lot of their time watching TV than in sleeping and studying. There were
also instances that certain TV audiences had become couch potatoes – an exemplary sample
of laziness rather than man becoming productive for our economy and society. These
technologies are also medium of providing and spreading much influence to viewers.
And computers and Internet has also its negative effects to mankind. Computer
games are just simple examples of the cons of technology to children. Furthermore, the
Internet specifically had provided venues for immorality like pornography and prostitution.
It provided people ways to destroy lives and business through undermining privacy and
security hacking. Many people make money through false advertising in the Internet or
bogus websites that are only up for fooling a lot of people. Intellectual theft in the film and
music industry is also a rampant issue that was transformed by the Internet – making it not
easily combated by our government laws nowadays. The sad thing about Internet is that
anything that is being posted online might forever be posted and circulated in the world
wide web – generations may past but a scandal video or a strong allegation or statement
against other people in a blog site might still be available 50 years from now in the Internet.
Again, we are all a few clicks away from making our mistakes online and inerasable for a
long time. As Erica said to Mark when they meet again in a restaurant, “the Internet is not
1
Retrieved last January 15, 2011, from: http://www.ourcivilisation.com/signs/chap7.htm
written on pencil, Mark. It is written on ink.” we could see that the Internet is not really a
safe place to express so much of our personal lives.
Facebook as well is not an excuse in terms noting its negative effects to people. It
has become a place where people spend most of their time communicating to others instead
of making an effort of having a face-to-face conversation. Privacy had also been affected by
too much “publicity” in the website. Students, teenagers and even very young children
become addicted to it – spending most of their time Facebooking rather than becoming
productive in their studies and house chores. Time become wasted in most social networks
if not backed up by self-control, and proper time and priorities management.
The purpose of technology is neither to minimize labor nor to maximize profits. It is to
serve and preserve the dignity and well-being of humanity. – Joseph Pearce, Small is
Still Beautiful: Economics as if Families Mattered, 20062
Yet the number of negative effects of Technology in our lives could still be overcame
by the number of positive uses and purposes of technology in our society and economy. A
lot were already mentioned in the discussion above regarding “Technology shaping our
lives”. Indeed, man created technology for himself, for his very own advantage to become a
better man in his environment and to the people that surrounds him. Innovation was made
for developing man’s potential in a world of complexities and difficulties. Man is the master
and the very core of technology – it is up for him how he will use it. Joseph Pierce is right
that technology’s purpose, besides making us efficient, is to “serve and preserve the dignity
and well-being of humanity”.
Where we are now in knowledge-based economy?
Today, in a world where everything could be interconnected to each other, it is easy
to pass on knowledge from one another. Ideas and its sense of originality have been
affected by the openness of Internet and other ways of spreading thoughts in today’s
technological advancement. What do we do about it?
It is hard where to side – to go for the traditional or to go with the flow. Technology
has its benefits but it could also be lethal to our human development. Today, the fight in our
economy is not just about making goods and services that seem to be perceived by our
eyes or any senses. The battle in our economy could be in the mind. It’s knowledge after
knowledge – each battle in an economy where everything’s seems to rely on man’s ideas,
beliefs and thoughts. When all of these are expressed in words, it could change the course
of our life in a society where knowledge maneuvers our actions and decisions in our
economy as perpetuated and catalyzed by our technology.
As for me, I stay my ground in guarding my thoughts and actions very well. In such
a knowledge-based economy we have at the moment, my decisions and my opinions are
crucial to my development as a person and to my environment. I will use the technology I
have with modesty, presence of mind and self-control. With this, I’m able to give what is
essential to our economy, not what could destroy it. After all, technology is not really bad to
people. It was made for our betterment. To use it for its purpose, taking in consideration
that we use it for what is right or moral, is the best thing we could do with all of our
technology for our economy and society’s progress.
2
Retrieved last January 16, 2011, from: http://www.fireandknowledge.org/archives/2007/11/11/the-purpose-of-
technology-pearce/
