Phone Addicts

Technology has brought people closer together through social media. People today are able to make new friends online from anywhere around the world. This also means that people can meet anyone from anywhere to form an intimate relationship with. Technology has created a vast new world for us, but sometimes we don't know when to stop. While it's been successful in creating new interactions, people often forget about the ones right in front you. There is nothing more frustrating than spending time with a loved one, and they are paying more attention to their phone rather than you. It seems as though some people can't even go a half an hour without being on their phone. People become so engrossed with their devices that they need to learn to remember to give their significant other the respect and attention they deserve. 

Technology and Intimate relationships

My boyfriend and I have this agreement that whenever we are together, we put our phones aside and spend quality time together. I like to think this works because we have been together for five years now. Whether it is a date to our favorite restaurant, or just watching tv on the couch, we make it a point to silence our phones and just enjoy each others company. However, this does not mean technology still has not effected our relationship. I would say 95% of the fights my boyfriend and I get into are about social media. I will get upset if I see he followed a girl that I think is prettier than me, and he will get upset if he sees me snapchatting a guy friend of mine. The funny thing is, these fights last for five minutes and then we step back and question why we just wasted energy fighting about that. We end up laughing it off and moving on, but some couples do not work it out as easy as we do. Going back to spending time together, it hurts me to see a couple out to dinner and both of them are on their phones or one of them is completely immersed in something on their device while the other just stares and waits for the food to come so their date could be over. I do not think there is anything that upsets me more than that.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/rediscovering-love/201103/can-love-survive-in-the-age-technology

That article talks about the future of relationships and how technology can tear people apart. I found it sad but also extremely interesting.

Impact of technology on intimate relationships

Social media is an excellent way to stay connected with friends and family. The ability to be truly connected with other human beings is becoming more difficult with the power of security that technology grants us. Most people want to find the ultimate form of human connection, the kind that lasts a lifetime, and most people want to love someone and they want to be loved in return. With the amount of time spent staring at screens throughout the day, it is likely to meet a potential mate online. Finding someone to love through technological means is understandable since people love technology. An estimated one third of all marriages today begin online. Studies show that in less than a decade or two more than half of romantic relationships will start on the internet. There is no disputing that happy marriages that lead to new families can be found online. For adults out of college and moved away from the place they called home, it's sometimes a struggle to meet new people so they resort to using what is at their fingertips in order to interact and connect with others. The act of meeting someone has never been more easier yet challenging all at once.

Dating a robot

The picture was edited to make it SFW.

The terms and condition of a "dating website"

FOR AMUSEMENT PURPOSES ONLY

1. THIS SITE UTILIZES FANTASY PROFILES IDENTIFIED AS FANTASY CUTIES. You comprehend, acknowledge, and accept that some of the profiles listed on the Site may be operated by our Site or third party contractors and are fictitious. These profiles and interactions generated from them are clearly labelled with the Fantasy Cuties logo:
   Fantasy Cuties functionality is offered to help the Service 1) enforce Service rules and policies, 2) monitor use of Site, 3) illustrate to users the features and communication tools of the Site, 4) enhance your online communication, companionship and entertainment experience, 5) and to promote increased use of the Site such posting of profile information and/or additional content to users' profile pages.

This "dating website" uses a large amount of computer generated profiles which will be denoted to the viewer with a gold star with FC written inside the star.  This can be viewed in the picture above of a 'Fantasy Cuties' profile from the site.  

Whether the account is managed by a person who is in charge of other accounts or a computer generated response program the user of the site would be able to have sexually explicit conversations with the account leading to a fake formation of intimacy with a person which would lead to problems in future legitimate relationships.

How is Technology Shaping Romance: Catfish TV Show

 Catfish TV Show Trailer

The dating world has changed drastically- It's no longer waiting for a call from that guy or girl you saw on your first date, taking 3 buses to get to the city for a date, or ringing the doorbell and walking your date to the car. Being together and being connected has become much easier with the progression of technology...  so easy that it might be the reason people get in and out of relationships so readily nowadays. There are now hundreds of free and accessible online dating sites making the dating process much more simplified and convenient. However, people are taking advantage of these sites and many relationships formed through the virtual screen may be based on lies and false information. As the anthropologist Helen Fisher argues, "There's not a dating service on this planet that can do what the human brain can do in terms of finding the right person," In other words, meeting face to face is the most essential component when meeting someone new. I believe that the process of online dating creates a wall between two people, where there can never be full trust, instead of bringing them close.   

Catfish: The TV Show is an American reality-based documentary television series airing on MTV about the truths and lies of online dating.

Double Burdens

The Industrial Revolution was not a time and place for women and children to be a part of. Although the Industrial Revolution did provide an independent wage, mobility, a better standard of living for some, many others had to face a life of hardship. Many of the working conditions women and children had to work in were usually unsanitary and rather dangerous. Many diseases were spread, which often lead to many deaths during the revolution.

Women were faced with double burdens. Women needed to find waged work outside of their home and were still expected to continue with their domestic chores and child care. Women had many burdens upon their shoulders, doing twice the amount of work as men, but were still were receiving less wages. But the need for wages kept increasing, therefore children and women needed to continue working. Because children had to work, they were deprived of an education.

Women and children were treated unfairly during this drastic time in the United States. Women needed to work twice as hard and children were forced to grow up quickly. Living conditions may have slightly improved, but the hardships and struggles throughout the work day was overbearing and exhausting.

The industrial revolution and the impact on women

Video

During the industrial revolution every person in the working class was subjected to dangerous working conditions not only women and children.  The difference between women and men working during the industrial revolution was that when women were done working in the factory they were also in charge of taking care of the kids in the family.

Women during the industrial revolution would not only be exposed to dangerous working conditions at factories they would also be subjected to sexual harassment by supervisors because more often then not the person was a male worker.

As the video had stated women who would be working in factories would often be single mothers taking care of children at home. The video had stated at the end " Women experienced a better standard of living" which as the viewer I had interpreted that as women without the factory job and no other person to support them would have had to turn to a much less favorable way of making a living.

In the end however it is certain that women were the group of people that suffered most from the industrial revolution.

The Industrial Revolution: Did we even consider women?

The Industrial Revolution impacted the economy, but how did it impact women? The women during the Industrial Revolution were working in horrible conditions and work weeks that consisted of 60 hours or more, and then going home and taking care of a family and raising children. I feel like if this was happening now, there would be riots in the streets and protests that women would be catching diseases in sweatshops and then bringing them home to her children. Along with the harsh working conditions, women also suffered because they had to sacrifice their education in order to work along with raising a family outside of the workplace. Education was not a right to women or even a priority in the time during the Industrial Revolution. Young women were also subjected to these horrible working conditions and they would come home with injuries that were not taken care of in the work place. The worst of all, was that men would do the equal amount of work as women and sometimes less than them and still receive higher wages than women would. The Industrial Revolution is not a time that we should ever revert to.

Impact of Industrial Revolution and how it impacted women in the family

The Industrial Revolution was fueled by the economic necessity of many women, singled and married, to find waged work outside their home. Mostly, women found jobs in domestic service, textile factories, and piece work shops. They also worked in the coal mines. For the majority of women factory work in the early years of the 19th century resulted in a life of hardship, and for some women the Industrial Revolution provided independent wages, mobility and a better standard of living. Inspectors visited mills, mines and shops taking evidence from workers to see ways in which the Industrial Revolution affected women and families. Working conditions were often unsanitary and the work was dangerous, the education suffered because of the demands of work, home life suffered as women were faced with the double burden of factory work followed by domestic chores and child care, men assumed supervisory roles over women and received higher wages, unsupervised young women away from home generated societal fears over their fate, as a result of the need for wages in the growing cash economy, families became dependent on the wages of women and children, and there was some worker opposition to proposals that child and female labor should be abolished from certain jobs were some ways in which the Industrial Revolution affected women and families identified by the inspectors.

The Industrial Revolution: A Boom for Business, A Bane to Women and Children

Child Labor During the Industrial Revolution

Starting in 1760, the Industrial Revolution changed the lives of hundreds of thousands of families. Two worlds, work and home life, which were previously connected, were now separated and caused struggle for many women trying to find a balance between the two worlds. Due to the fact that businesses were not conducted at home, the house hold was seen as a women's realm and the world of business was viewed as the man's realm. The Industrial Revolution was fueled by the economic necessity of many women, single and married, to find waged work outside their home. Women mostly found jobs in domestic service, textile factories, and piece work shops. This great need for womens' participation in the working field led to the increase of servantry within the household.  Children were also succumbed to harsh working conditions, long hours, and dangerous environments. Since the Industrial Revolution was fairly new at the end of the 18th century, there were initially no laws implemented to regulate these new and booming industries. The women and young children suffering to maintain a single flow of money were not protected in any ways. For example, not a single law prevented businesses from hiring six year old children to work full time in a factory or coal mine. Once placed in a factory for  12-16 hours, there was no law protecting these beings from the biohazard waste produced by the factory itself, eventually affecting their health. Nothing was done- Free market capitalism meant that the government had no role in regulating new industries Those who controlled the government liked it that way... Overall, the industrial revolution decentralized many families, especially the ones on the lower social scale and derogated their daily lives.

Technology: The Evil Hero

Technology has massively and rapidly improved throughout the centuries. From tools used to expedite farming in the 1800s to the rocket to the moon to the modern cell phone, technology has surely gone a long way to improve our way of living and expand our knowledge of the known universe. Technology can be the hero: improvements in medicine and medical technology to prevent or cure diseases that was once thought to be incurable. But even this type of technology can be abused. Many medicine companies make their pills less effective than what they could potentially do. Instead of finding a cure to a particular disease they would rather make billions of dollars off medication that threats the symptoms. This is the greed that medicine companies show under their sugar-coated smiles. For example, some medicines that help threat antidepressants or high blood pressure just so happen to loose blood flow to the male genital, making it harder for men to become erect. It just so happens that the same medicine that causes this issue also makes a blue pill that helps with erectile dysfunction. This means more money from their costumers and there’s really nothing we can do about it. Although this is not the case for all companies, those that are overwhelmed by greed have cheated us from our money and our dignity.

                On the topic of cell phones, they help us do one basic thing: communicate. The fundamental of having a cell phone is good for when a danger or a conversation needs to be addressed. It gets out of hand when people are attached to their cell phones. They make it a daily necessity. In this way, they become dehumanized and lose that magic human characteristic of being emphatic. They forget what it is to become human and to interact with other human beings in the physical world. They become so attached and so self-loved (or narcissistic like) that they no longer care what happens to others. They don’t account for others when they do something, because “everything revolves around them”. They have lost the self-discipline to even care or notice that what they are doing is wrong. This all could have been caused by a combination of things. Social neglect, improper or incomplete childhood experience (lacking maturity), physical or verbal abuse, bulling, social media, peer pressure, following the crowd (bandwagon), no self-control, and lack and/or search of love, are a few roots to the problem. I believe that every person who is exposed to technology, like cell phones, and isn’t raised to use it correctly and understand its use righteously may develop a lack of empathy.

                There is a cure: self-growth. Mature from the rest of the bad weeds and become the flower that brightens someone’s day. This takes time, self-awareness and dedication, but once this dying human characteristic becomes a part of someone, that person has gained their empathy and heart back. They have snapped back into reality. A place that needs more than saving. A place that needs a miracle to save the existence of humanity. 

"Why I Refuse to Let Technology Control Me"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRl8EIhrQjQ

Found this video online. Social media isn't a bad thing. It opens up everyone's minds and creates new opportunities to meet new people. But social media can be abused and overused. One of the lines, "it's ironic how these touch screens can make us lose touch". I found it to be very relevant with what Professor Williams talks about; humans need touch. Humans have to learn to balance out technology with the rest of the world.

How much is too much?

Technology is one of the greatest advancements of the 21st century. It has opened new ways to communicate with others around us and from around the world. We get a chance to meet new people that they may not have had the chance to do before. But sometimes the power can be abused and people tend to stick to their phones. Some people forget to look up and often times, ruins empathy in a person. Now that everything is done behind a screen, we often forget about the people and their emotions who are behind the screen. Technology is being thrown in our faces and we have nothing to do but accept it and roll with it. Empathy is something that is being taken away, but can't entirely be blamed on the ones who are using it.

Technology: Does it kill or breed empathy?

I think that in a way technology kills empathy because nowadays everyone relies on their phone to communicate with people. There are not as many face to face interactions with people anymore but when there are most people will at some point get distracted and take out their phone and start to text someone or check social media, for example, and not really be with the other person. It is important to pay attention to others because that is how we become more human. Now, a way that technology breeds empathy is if, say you have a relative that lives in another country and the only convenient way to communicate with them is through social media or e-mail. So it really depends on how you look at if technology is breeding or killing empathy.

The face behind the screen, do we consider it?

As social media was first developing, most of us in this class were in middle school or maybe high school. I know for me, Twitter was invented when I was in fifth grade and Instagram when I was in eighth grade. I noticed something about my classmates changing once these networks became more prominent in our lives: nobody was thinking about the person, just the social network. This always bothered me because you would have a girl post a picture of herself on Instagram, a boy call her fat in the comments, and the next day that girl would not be in school because she was ashamed to show her face because everyone saw that last night. However, the issues would always be taken to the principal and the boy behind the screen would always face detention or some sort of punishment. I find that having screens as a barrier between people makes it easier for them to be cruel and say things that they would not normally say face to face. This contributes to Professor Williams idea that empathy may be dying within us because of these devices. Children are now using chatrooms more than ever before and saying horrible things to people they hardly know. Part of growing as a person and learning right from wrong is saying something mean to someones face and realizing that it did not feel good and made them feel bad. As children are using more and more technology and not having conversations face to face, I am worried that empathy is going to be something that is lost in the future generations to come. I hope there is a way we can save it as a society before it is too late.

Google: Was Innocent. Now Abused.

Google has been a very helpful tool throughout its birth. It was first used to find, understand and learn new information. When Google was innocent, it opened the eyes for many people willing to learn new skills, local and global news, and communicate through the amazing realm of the internet. Once more and more people started to use the internet there were many people who used the internet for entertainment (ie. trolling). This is where people, even the news companies, who abuse the truth in information. When these people are people we look up to for information, such as many news companies, some of us believe that every word they are saying is true. Some of us have poor critical thinking skills or are just to lazy to question if the information they are given is valid. They essentially believe everything they hear and see. We abuse Google as the internet becomes more and more into our daily lives. Most of us no longer use Google to learn and understand information. We just use it to quickly find information and later forget about that information. We have become lazy in this sense. As Diana had stated, we need to learn how to use Google correctly and to not rely on every information given to us. We need to think for ourselves and further explore the subject of interest. We need to love to learn and explore the world again through our own eyes and make our own observations and conclusions.

Malala: The Face of Revolution

"So here I stand, one girl among many. I speak not for myself, but so those without a voice can be heard. Those who have fought for their rights. Their rights to live in peace. Their right to be treated with dignity. Their right to equality of opportunity. Their right to be educated." This is just some of Malala's inspiring words on her speech to the United Nations in 2013. Malala is an education activist. She is the definition of revolutionary because she is a global advocate for millions of girls around the world who are a denied a formal education because of social, economic, and political factors. There are currently 57 million children out of school. Because of Malala, several millions of dollars has been raised for the Malala Fund towards children's education around the world. She has spoken up for the children with no voice, bringing awareness and attention to poor education. She has proven that there are no age limits to stand up to injustice. Malala has had a blog about education rights since she was 11 years old and spoke at the UN at just 16 years old to fight for what she believes in. Education is an important role in society. No child should ever be denied the right to an education. Malala is revolutionary because after she delivered her speech, the United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki Moon stated that the UN is committed to providing education to all children through its Global Education First Initiative. Malala has changed the world with brave words and fearless actions. Malala has given all of us hope that one day, all children will have complete access to a proper education. As Malala stated, "When the whole world is silent, even one voice becomes powerful."