Over the last decade or two we have seen huge advances in technology, such as smartphones and faster internet leading to streaming television. Although technology has made our lives better in a lot of ways is it making us lazier?
Having moved to Spain 6 months ago with little Spanish it came to my awareness early on that Google Translate would be essential - I could use in everyday situations to help communicate with people. But six months on and I am still relying on this smartphone app on my phone to communicate with people. It has become to easy to rely on this to help me talk to people than put in the effort to actually spend any real time learning the language. Imagine 20 years ago - I would have had no choice but to learn the language, or life would have been very difficult!
<h1>The World at your fingertips</h1>
There is pretty much unlimited content available at your fingertips now - from Youtube, to Netflix to Amazon Prime. Before streaming television I remember if you wanted to watch something you had to be home the same time each week - and often life took over and I would end up not watching alot of TV. Now, we can watch whatever we want, whenever we want - if we don't like something, there is always something else waiting for us.
I have always been a keen collector as a teenager, and over time I have abandoned these habits - I had boxes of CDs and DVDs and got rid of them - I wonder if I will regret this one day? I miss the days of having a limited selection - I think I appreciated things a lot more - listening to albums 100s of times until I knew every single word, and the CD was so scratched it would barely read. Even with movies I could watch movies 5 or more times. There was a strange joy about shopping for CDS - and even going to the DVD store trying to pick out a movie to watch - the decision was much more serious because if you didn't like the movie then that was it.
I do love having the world of music selection at my fingertips through Spotify, but it seems to me that this comes with a downside, and sometimes it seems like there is just to much selection - what does everyone else think about this?
I am firmly converted to the Kindle now and I really do love it. But there is still a piece of me that misses paper books. There is something special about trawling through second hand book shops until you find a gem of a book to read. However for me, especially travelling the Kindle just offers too much convenience to go back to paper books for now. I hope in the future to have a book collection.
<h1>The social media trap</h1>
Although I try not to fall into this trap to much, it is easy to keep in contact with friends and family less, as we feel connected with them through social media. Its true that in the past I feel like I know a lot about people just from their social media profile so don't feel that need to contact them to have a proper conversation. Even birthdays - we get a reminder through Facebook that its peoples birthday. You would be surprised how many people genuinely remember your birthday - alot of people just write a message because they got a reminder from Facebook.
Although people today feel like they are much more connected, there is less face to face communication. How many times have you seen a group of people out for a social catch up, yet they are all on their phones?
Don't get me wrong, technology has been revolutionary to our lives and have come with many benefits over the past 20 years. However technology has led us to change our consumption habits and sometimes makes things a little bit too easy. However like most things it comes down to the choices we make as to how things affect us.
As usual I would love to hear your opinions in the comments!
hiveblocks