Technology and Sociolization - Essay Example

17 June Negative Impacts of Technology upon relationships, employment, and education Relationships: Cell phone is a type of technology that often has many negative impacts upon personal relationships, specially for people for whom words mean a lot and if perceived wrongly, can impact their relationships. It may so happen in intimate love relationships, like that between a girlfriend and a boyfriend, a husband and a wife, and fiancees. These days, texting is widely employed as a means of communication.

According to an estimate, “more than ten million of texts and emails are sent each second” (Nundu). People prefer to text rather than call because the former is more cost effective as compared to the latter. Many networks provide their users with such packages in which they can pay once and for all for all the messages in a month. Such packages cost the consumers far less than texting otherwise. Therefore, many people tend to purchase the packages of unlimited messages. These text messages can have very deleterious impact upon the relationships if the meaning is perceived wrongly.

The biggest drawback of text messages is that it conveys only meanings, not emotions. Let’s suppose a man loves his fiance so much that he can not wait to talk to her, and texts his fiance, “I need to talk to you right now!” The fiance may not perceive that his eagerness reflects his love for her. Instead, she may think that the fiance is ordering her to talk to him without wasting a moment, like he would order a servant of his. The confusion may flare up ambiguities in their hearts and their relationship may suffer as a result of that.

Even the call service may inculcate confusions in the minds of people. Sometimes, an individual’s battery empties while he/she is talking to another person in which case, the one at the other end of the line may think that the phone has been voluntarily cut. In other cases, people do voluntarily cut off the phone and later, put forth the rationale of battery going empty. Quite often, the other person is smart enough to tell a lie from a truth and the relationship between the two suffers. Moreover, “[l]ong pauses can be interpreted as avoidance” (Marshall).

Employment: The aforementioned qualities of call and text messages may also instigate confusions between an employer and an employee. Besides, technology has exposed senior employees to the risk of expulsion from job. In the contemporary age, new softwares are being developed and introduced into the market in order to make the work totally computerized. The use of softwares has obviated the need of manual work. The elderly employees that have been working in the industry for a major part of their lives have not had a chance to work on computers, or gain expertise in the newer softwares that have popped up like mushrooms everywhere for the last decade or two.

As compared to the elderly employees, the young employees come into the market with sufficient expertise in the use of new softwares that have become of prime importance in the business world. Because of their knowledge and expertise in the use of softwares, young employees are preferred over the elderly in jobs. Thus, technology has had a negative impact upon the employment opportunities for the elderly employees who are attuned to the old way of working. Education: Technology has also had certain negative impacts upon education.

With the evolution of internet, students tend to retrieve all information they require from internet. Internet has attenuated students’ relation with books. Students find it more convenient, cost effective and quicker to refer to internet for all sorts of information rather than books. Books prove costly as the whole book has to be purchased when a meager amount of information is required. It would have been totally OK for students to refer to internet instead of books had the internet maintained a system for reliable information.

Quite often, the information retrieved from internet is biased and serves the purposes of advertising agencies that make use of puffery to convince the audience into buying their product. Moreover, bloggers post information totally according to their individualistic perceptions about a subject which may be as wrong as right. “Students might also plagiarize an obscure article, poem or short story for a writing class simply because they don't expect to be caught or because they expect instant success with little effort” (Callahan).

Books have to be referred to in order to retrieve genuine information about a subject. Students’ over-dependence upon internet for education is ruining the quality of their education. Works Cited: Callahan, Rob. “Negative Effects of Internet in Education.” 2011. Web. 17 Jun. 2011. . Marshall, Candi. “Texting in Relationships: How Does it Impact You?” The Voice. 2009. Web. 17 Jun. 2011. . Nundu, Mariam. “How email and texting affects relationships.” 20 Mar. 2009. Web. 17 Jun. 2011. .