Essay 2 - Mandatory Assignment PDF

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Impact of Technology on Abilities to Connect Maria Konnikova and Nick Paumgarten are one of the known and established writers of the New Yorker. Konnikova and Paumgarten in their essays “Limits of Friendship” & “We Are a

Camera” discuss about how an individual connects to oneself and to others. They critically examine the ways in which these connections are being influenced by the technology. In her essay, Maria Konnikova primarily focuses on the impact of technology on on abilities of a person to connect to people around him. To explain her viewpoints, she gives a reference to “Dunbar Number” according to which, “ The best known, a hundred and fifty, is the number of people we call casual friends…”(Konnikova 236). The Dunbar Number gives an approximate number of humans a normal human can try connecting with. But, looking into the number of connections/friends people have these days on social media, Dunbar Number seemed to have largely varied from a count of 150 to a few hundreds to a few thousands. “ As constant use of social media has become the new normal, however, people have started challenging the continued relevance of the Dunbar’s Number: Isn’t it easy to have more friends when we have Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to cultivate and maintain them?” (Konnikova 237). The answer is yes, it is absolutely easy to expand one’s network of friends over internet; but; really hard to maintain. We can have a vast network of friends on social media but the question is are they all real friends? Do we really connect to a thousand people around us? Or is it just about the number of friends rather than number of close and real friends we have? The fact is, no matter how many friends one makes on social media, it’s hard to connect and keep in touch with all of them at the same time. “The amount of social capital you have is pretty fixed,”

Dunbar said(Konnikova 238). One of the major impacts of social media on the ability to establish strong connections with people is that it had left no room for the physical interaction and bonding. Too much virtual interaction through social network has led to lack of emotions and failure to understand the feelings in today’s generation. This world of technology is replacing real friends with virtual friends because the number of friends on social media fascinates today’s generation more as compared to the number of real friends. Konnikova concludes that this virtual world of social networking has replaced real time friends with virtual friends and asserts, “It’s quite conceivable that we might end up less social in the future”(Konnikova 239). On the other hand, Nick Paumgarten, in his article, “We Are a Camera” explores the popularity of GoPro Cameras used to record extraordinary events. It is mainly used by surfers, bikers, divers and mountain climbers to preserve their experience of their journeys. As the use of this technology has increased considerably, Paumgarten begins to consider its consequences. Tracing back the history of this technology, Paumgarten discovers that the video tapings recorded by these cameras is valued more than the real life experience of the person. GoPro cameras make the experience feel benign when it may not be that way at all. In his essay, he discusses about life examples of known GoPro enthusiasts like Aaron Chase, Andrew Rossig, and Kelly McGerry. He is amazed to have discovered that the GoPro videos are of more importance than the person who actually witnessed the feeling and the real feeling itself. It has become a business that eve n leads people to risk their lives just to get the perfect videos. Paumgarten said, “ GoPro has been sensitive to the contention that their cameras play any role in getting people to do stupid, risky, dangerous, or unlawful things.” He gives an example of Andrew

Rossif, a carpenter in New York, who under influence of the GoPro’s popularity decides to do base jumping with a few friends from an iconic building and shoot a video to become popular and get sponsored by the GoPro company. Their plan takes a turn when they get arrested because of the content they uploaded on the social media was considered unlawful. Their practice of base jumping from that building was marked illegal and they were imprisoned for a span of seven years. Their dreams to become popular, get noticed by the GoPro company and make money turns out to be a disaster. This is surprising how under the influence of social media people risk their lives and ruin their future by their foolish actions. “He and the others now face numerous charges, including one felony, and as much as seven years in prison”(Paumgarten 341). Konnikova & Paumgarten both focus on the negative impacts of technology leading to deterioration of the society on whole. People are drowning in the pool of technology to gain fame, name, wealth, fake happiness etc. Everyone is following the mob without thinking about the results of their actions in the future. Konnikova explains the fake connects people establish on social media whereas on the other hand, Paumgarten explains how people urge to be a part of the fake social world. They are against the flourishment of technology because it’s leading to nothing but a generation of virtual emotions. To maintain the status quo, everyone is trying to surpass each other in every possible sense one can. In a nutshell, I support the arguments presented by Konnikova and Paumgarten because the society is falling victim to the fast moving world of technology. I accept that technology comes with its own advantages ,but the negative impacts that it’s leaving on today’s generation

will lead to a new generation of nothing more than robots. People are losing their sense of critical thinking before acting and reacting under influence of technology.

WORKS CITED

Konnikova, Maria. “Limits of Friendship.” Emerging: Contemporary Readings for Writers. Ed.Barclay Barrios. 3rd ed. Bedford St Martin’s, 2016.

Paumgarten, Nick. “We Are a Camera.” Emerging: Contemporary Readings for Writers. Ed.Barclay Barrios. 3rd ed. Bedford St Martin’s, 2016....