Can we avoid technology?

A few weeks ago I answered the phone at the computer repair shop I work for and talked with a lady who had nearly come to terms with the ways in which she had become dependant on technology. Her computer had broken down a day after she lost her job and subsequently her work cell phone she depended on. For nearly three weeks she had been without these objects and it was fascinating to hear her tell about the opportunity to read books, take walks, and contemplate life in a different, yet positive way. Her reason for calling was that she realized she was completely unable to look for and apply for a new job without her computer.

“And Anthropological studies of biological objects and the social life of things – all to which trace their genealogy to Marx’s insights into the experience of labour – have made us more acutely aware of the complex ways in which objects become personalized and persons become objectified in the course of social life.“ – Michael Jackson (pg. 334)

This sentence offers an explanation for the way we have adopted technology and adapted it to our uses for a very long time. Only now are we starting to realize and understand the overall social effects that are driven by it. I would argue that ever since we began to use our intelligence to create rock tools and seek a more supreme being we have always been skeptical of where it will lead us, both politically and socially. In almost every case there are good and bad things that can come of it, including becoming completely dependant on it. For all practical purposes technology and further development is part of human nature and cannot be stopped.