Enjoying the Outside

Jackie Lineberger

English 103

Instructor Stowe

21 February 2013

The Pleasure Machine

            New advances in society always have pros and cons, and different people can be for or against it depending on whom the advancement favors. Different generations perceive different problems in technology because the older generations have experienced a longer life without it. Having an Iphone or any other Internet source at one’s fingertips has created this sort of alternative society. Either one’s mind is consumed with the cyber world or their mind is experiencing real life things and learning knew things on their own. Society has made society more efficient however it has changed society because people rely on technology too much to where they do not enjoy the real things in life.

            In many aspects of life technology can be helpful, however it is changing the way people live their lives. People have gone from a home phone, to pay phones, to car phones, to cell phones, to smart phones. Although this does not have a huge impact it saves a lot of time. People can learn so much by typing something into their touch screen phones instead of having to stop at an exit to use a phone or travel to a knowledgeable person’s location to ask them about it. Now one just has to Google it on their Iphone.

            Technology has created something like an alternative universe. Jeremy Bentham once said that all values derive from pleasure, but a counter argument of this was the “Pleasure Machine.” It is an alternative universe where one can only experience pleasure and nothing else. Once one enters they cannot come back to this world, but he or she would not know that there was another world once he or she entered. When offered this most would decline because it takes away from other values. Technology has created a world similar to the Pleasure Machine. If that’s all one dedicates his or her life to then they miss out on important things such as the outdoors, family, friends, gaining knowledge through experience, love and many other important aspects of life.  This why it is important to not let technology consume life because it is basically a fake world.

            When people use technology for their job it is a different story considering they are being consumed by their work just like any other worker would be. It does not make a difference if the worker is working on the railroads and that is all he is worried about or if a music track editor sits in a chair all day and stares at a screen. They are doing it for money purposes for the most part, and the worker should be consumed in this job while he is working it.