Posted by Emily Knutson on Nov 30, 2016; 4:24pm
URL: https://nabble.aealearningonline.org/Topic-4-Narrative-Voice-tp3794p6333.html

I often tell my students about how much technology has changed since I took my Education Media course in college.  This course showed us how to use an overhead projector, how to thread a filmstrip, and brief introduction to what was then called the "World Wide Web."  Sending an email was a new concept, and really reserved only for sharing weekend plans with your friends at other colleges.  Technology has changed so much in the past 20 years, but has it really made things better in the world of education, or society in general?
Technology has provided us with great opportunities.  We can communicate with almost anyone with the push of a button.  We can find out about almost anything in the world by simply typing our interests into a search engine.  Information is at our fingertips, and we don't need to wait for the book to come back to the library, or even go to the library at all!  We can get almost anything we want delivered to our front door if we have a valid credit card and internet access.  But does technology do more harm than good?
One of the negative aspects of always being accessible is the fact that we are expected to be available 24-hours a day.  We used to be able to go home and relax without getting emails and text messages demanding information right now.  We are losing the ability to find information without the use of Google.  When I take my children to the library, they have no idea how to find a book, or any other information without looking it up online.  We are communicating so much through computers and smart phones, that I fear we are losing the ability to communicate in a real life face-to-face encounter.  
We are starting to live in a paperless world, where everything is digital.  This is great for saving trees and organizing information.  The only problem is when the system malfunctions, or the power goes out. I feel that our world has benefited from technology in general; however, I do feel that we there is some harm that come with it.  We has humans need to make the decision to live in a world where technology helps us, but doesn't run our lives.