A Robotic Lifestyle

Posted by admin on 09 February 2010

Robotic creations are now an everyday part of our lives. Things such as computers, toasters and even baseball softball pitching machines are utilized to help us in our day -to -day life. It’s quite easy to stand inside a batting cage and face a round of balls that appear to be identical to those pitched by a real human. What kind of moral questions do such possibilities bring out? Is it okay to be so reliant on machines? My concern is not with machines taking over our lives in any scary movie sense, I don’t predict batting cages to come to life and try to destroy us all, but our dependence on machines to do the work that was completed by humans less than a hundred years ago marks a massive change in the way we conduct our lives. This change is worth pondering.

Obviously, with the inception of the internet, our whole mode of being has been altered. It’s hard to imagine what it would have been like for Native Americans, for example, or even British who lived in a rural setting. These people would have seen perhaps only a few hundred people in their lifetime, while we may interact with that many humans within the time of just a year, and the number of faces we see can hardly be counted.

While the differences may seem insignificant, it has to be admitted that such a way of living will have effects on our brains themselves. It’s been reported that the brain is physically altered by the sensations and emotions it receives, so to say what we perceive changes our brain is in no way over the top.

Has the growing use of machines had a positive effect on our lives? If we think about this in terms of convenience and superficial happiness, there’s no doubt that it has. It has never been easier to have food and entertainment delivered to our door within minutes of our desire to have them. But this, of course, is only true for those in wealthy situations within developed countries. In order to exist like this, there are others in non-developed countries who must do the work of making the shoes, joining the machines and building the boxes. It goes without saying that the majority of these workers will be poorly paid for their labor, as those in the developed areas would be unwilling to pay a larger price for things which we feel are deserved.

Along with the violation of other humans is the violation of non-human life. The way we act towards nature appears to be a near abusive relationship, with humans simply taking what they can see around them and claiming it to be his own.

Undoubtedly, such a negative relationship with the world surrounding us has begun to have seriously damaging effects on the way we’re able to live our own lives of comfort. When nature and machine damage each other, it is nature that humans will have to have more in order to go on living. One would wish that we are able to see this reality before it’s too late.

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