12 Hours Without Technology Essay

Those who identify themselves as technological determinists believe we as gentleman have remarkably little control over engineering and the effect it has on the world. Just two months ago, I passionately denied this point of view and place myself as a friendly constructivist. Perhaps it is the idea of non being in complete control of my decisions that I did not want to accept. However, after finish the challenge of going twelve hours without technology, I quickly learned that my thoughts on technological determinism were not in line with my experiences.The fact is technology has become an constitutive(a) part of day-to-day life. Truly understanding the effects and d be I say, control, that technology has on life, twelve hours without it will certainly enlighten distri plainlyively one of us. In the following pages, I will attempt to describe the challenges of my day without technology. Further much, I will attempt to interpret how my experiences relate to my relationship wit h technology and society. Ultimately, my tendency is to identify events which support or defy the view of technological determinism and understand the driving factors behind them.See to a greater extentFirst Poem for You EssayWith a career that heavily relies on technology, I reasonably challenged myself to refrain from using technology on a Sunday. What I learned was quite an move and honestly, quite stressful. First, to appreciate the challenges I endured on this Sunday, it is crucial to know a little bit about my passe-partout background. As a licensed mortgage give originator, I have a fiduciary duty to all of my clients that are purchasing a home. While my career requires a large set of passkey requirements, the most valuable aspect to being successful is to be available nearly 24 hours a day every day of the week.Going into this project, I knew that refraining from using technology, specifically my phone and the com gear uper, would prove to be challenging but at the sam e time I figured everyone deserves a day remove every now and thenI soon learned that this would come with a cost. My Sunday morning started off much the same as whatever other. I woke up early to tend to my e-mails that had made their way to my inbox from potential homeowners throughout the evening. Responsibly, I made sure to reply to every e-mail, voicemail and, textbook sum prior to 900AM.Completely disconnecting from the internet and shutting down my phone was just as nerve racking as I had anticipated it to be. cognise that this day would be a challenge for me, I had previously arranged a few things to do to keep my mind and attention away from my business. Depending on how one would define technology, virtuallyone could argue that I instantly failed to avoid the use of technology within just an hour of starting my project. My married woman and I left the house in the technological wonder of a Chevy Tahoe Hybrid around 930AM to attend regular church services.I accept ri ght away that avoiding technology entirely for twelve hours would be impossible for me to accomplish. Instead, I switched my focus to avoiding my phone, internet or computer use for the remainder of the day. My wife and I proceeded to attend church and then went to lunch. When we returned home, I decided to take each of the three dogs for a run. Normally, I opt to take one of them each day on a rotation, but it was a beautiful day and the small blinking light on my phone begging me to check my text messages, e-mails and voicemails were not within reach.This was my first insight into a day without technology. Almost immediately I was able to find more time to do things that are more valuable to me. While I was enjoying the extra time with my beloved pets, I also recognized that as the day progressed, I was growing more and more anxious from not being able to use my phone. Little did I know that by the time I had finished taking the culture four-legged child for a run, I was not the only anxious person affected by vacation from technology.There was a storm brewing that would stop my goal. When I returned home, my wife frantically met me at the door with her phone in hand. My managing sales supervisor had called her because he had acquire a few phone calls from hurly burly potential clients. Notably, this was just five hours into my twelve hour challenge on a Sunday afternoon. Reluctantly, I took the phone from my wife and proceeded to field the onslaught of wildcat questions as to my whereabouts and reasoning for not answering my phone or promptly replying to my e-mails.It is crucial to remember that Im essentially self-employed, so I had no obligation to answer to a supervisor for an issue such as this but the fact that I had chosen not to use an ordinary technology such as my phone, I found myself in an awkward and rather challenging position. After taking some time to put out some proverbial fires with my sales manager and a few clients, I put my phone d own and resumed my challenge of avoiding technology. Before doing so, I noticed that I had received several text messages throughout the day from friends and family.Reflecting upon the nature of the texts as I read through them, I noticed one general recurring theme. some of the initial text conversations had begun with an unassuming hello and how are you. Just five or six hours after not receiving a response from me, many of the colored conversations had progressed to worry about my safety. At this point, I dismissed the idea that I had control when it came to technology. As I reflected on these events, I could not help but be reminded of Neil Postman.We need to proceed with our eyes wide open so that we may use technology rather than be used by it (Postman, 1998, p. 6). Suddenly, I realized that I have been interacting with technological development in a way where technology was using me more than I was using it. By definition, social constructivism presumes that social and cul tural forces determine technical change (Johnson & Wetmore, 2009, p. 143). On the flip side, technological determinism is the claim that the introduction of new technologies produces direct and unalterable social changes (Johnson & Wetmore, 2009, p. 93).I acknowledge that refraining from technological use for twelve hours was an extremely small scale task in terms of the technology available at hand. Despite that, it was surprising how disturbed my friends, family, co-workers and clients alike had become by my avoidance of a phone. Technological change creates winners and losers (Harris, 2012). These disturbances certainly support this idea, and I would argue that this is at the foundation of the technological determinism theory. The introduction of the smartphone into my personal and professional life has set an expectation which has had a direct and unalterable affect.While this reliance on the phone may put me on the loser side of this equation, my clients are certainly on the wi nning side. My choice of career has brought new technology into my life that may have not been necessary with different decisions on my part. In closing, I should repeat that the main point of this paper and this experiment was to describe the challenges of a day without technology sequence interpreting my experiences in terms of the relationship between technology and society at a personal level.My experience with this project may have been more extreme than others given the expectations of my profession. However, by the end of my unsuccessful day without technology, it was clear that the technologies I have brought into my own life on a personal and professional level unmistakably dictates how I interact with the world and more importantly, how the outside world expects me to interact with it.