Technology

In today's world, technology is constantly changing from a new paperclip to an improvement in hospital machinery. Technology lets people improve the way they live so that they can preserve their own personal energy and focus on the really important factors in life. Some people focus their energy on making new innovations to improve transportation and the health of people that may save lives and some people focus on making new designs of packaging CDS. Technology is significant in everyone's life because it rapidly changes what is in the market. But, some new innovations of technology are ridiculous because they serve no purpose in helping mankind.

In Ellen DeGeneres' article ,"This is How We Live", describes all the examples of ridiculous innovations of technology, omitting how technology does help mankind, saying that technology is negative for mankind, and basically eliminating all the positive that technology has to offer. © ) . She believes that technology is hurting the people of America because requires hardly any physical activity and it tortures us. For example, when she says, " We just push a button and stand there. Take the car window. Someone decided that having to crank the window down yourself was too hard. 'I don't want to churn butter, I just want fresh air ' So we got a button to do it." (DeGeneres 588) She also believes that this technology is making Americans so lazy. "We're just so lazy. We used to have breath mints. Now we have breath strips that just dissolve on our tongue. Can we not suck anymore?" (Degeneres 589) Ellen decides to criticize all the new innovations because it is ridiculous that technology must be put in food so that we do not have to have any tongue action in sucking a breath mint.

Ellen believes that this kind of technology has a negative effect on all kinds of people. Modern technology has made us seem like we cannot do anything on our own anymore or it is taking too much of our personal energy. She reflects that human laziness is the result of modern technology that keeps improving until one day we just have to use our minds to control everything so that physical action does not have to take place. One of the new pointless technologies is the automatic brushing toothbrush. It is interesting how mankind has become so lazy as to not move their arm side to side to brush their teeth and have made an automatic brush where there is no need to move your arm side to side. Modern technology seems to be only innovated because of the need to have new designs and appearances to attract customers and make these inventors filthy rich. These inventors need to spend more time on improving machinery that handles life and death situations instead of trying to figure out a new way to package a DVD. This technology is one of the major reasons why so many people in America are obese. To work so hard at the gym and then coming home to watch television and using less calories in regular chores, is making it difficult for people to lose weight than in countries where technology has not improved. (PA)

In Langdon Winner's article, "Technological Somnambulism", praising the different technologies that influence the human activity and reshaping that activity. " When a sophisticated new technique or instrument is adopted in medical practice, it transforms not only what doctors do, but also the ways people think about health, sickness, and medical care. " (Winner 596) Not only does technology improve the way people can save energy, but it influences the way that people act and think to use it for other important tasks. People misunderstand the impact of technologies on everyday life. "Individual habits, perceptions, concepts of self, ideas of space and time, social relationships, and moral and political boundaries have all been powerfully restructured in the course of modern technological development." (Winner 598) There is a process that society is involved in that alters some of the fundamental terms of human life without intension to do so.

Langdon Winner uses the term technological somnambulism to describe the predominant stance toward technology in our culture. It is the fact that we so willingly sleepwalk through the process of reconstituting the conditions of human existence (Winner 598) via the adoption of new technologies. Pointing out that although popular commentary on technology