Living With Machines
Robotic machines are now an everyday part of our lives. Things such as computers, toasters and even baseball softball pitching machines are used to help us in our day -to -day life. It’s quite easy to stand inside a batting cage and hit 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 fine to be so reliant on machines? My worry is not with robots taking over our lives in any scary movie sense, I don’t expect batting cages to come to life and try to kill us all, but our dependence on machines to do the work that was done by humans less than a few decades years ago marks a massive change in the way we conduct our lives. This behavior is worth thinking about.
Obviously, with the creation of the internet, our whole mode of being has been altered. It’s hard to imagine what it would have been like for Native Canadians, for example, or even British who lived in a country setting. These people would have seen perhaps only a few hundred faces in their lifetime, while we may talk with that many humans within the course 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 experiences it receives, so to say what we view changes our brain is in no way an exaggeration.
Has the growing use of machines had a positive effect on our lives? If we consider this in terms of convenience and surface happiness, there’s no question 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, obviously, is only true for those in wealthy situations within developed countries. In order to live like this, there are others in poorer countries who must do the work of making the shoes, connecting the machines and packing the boxes. It goes without saying that most of these workers will be poorly paid for their labor, as those in the developed areas would be unwilling to pay a higher price for things which we feel are our right.
Along with the violation of other humans is the violation of non-human life. The way we treat 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 destructive relationship with the world around us has begun to have seriously damaging effects on the way we’re able to live our own lives of comfort. When the natural world and machine damage each other, it is nature that humans will have to have more in order to continue their survival. One would hope we are able to see this occur before it’s too late.
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