#1 "Is it a boy or girl, doc?" "No, it's a Macbook!"

Langdon Winner is taking thoughts of other life into a higher form. In his essay, Technologies as a Form of Life, he makes the claim that we are changing our view of how we see technology. The term is called technological somnambulism. This phrase suggests that were are sleep walking into the advances that we are making and therefore need better definitions or concepts of this new “life form”. Winner goes on and says that we either use technology as tool as a means to an end and nothing more, we separate the makers of the products versus the consumers, and we need to recognize the realms in which technology opens for us in our daily lives.

I agree that most of us do not understand exactly how much of ourselves is put into the tools that we have. We use computers as a way to research everything. I have personally seen the transition of speech in my short life. When I was young, When I didn’t know a word, My mother would reply with, “Look it up in the dictionary” or “We have an encyclopedia, don’t ask me”. Now, if I don’t know a word or any other random inform, the response is, “Google it”. We have grown dependent on these tools and without them we cannot function. I can recall when the electricity went out at CBU and because of half of the school had classes that used computers, they were cancelled.

In this semester, the internet has shut down multiple times. When it first happened, I freaked out and didn’t know how I was going to pass the time without Netflix. I exited my room and heard screams up and down the hallway of dorm mates screaming how they were in an “important” match of a computer game they were playing. In light of such a tragic event, people began to come out of their rooms and talk to one another. I live in the smallest dorm on campus and I had no idea who lived across from me until this event. One guy literally crawled up into a ball on the floor praying for the internet to come back on. This made me glad in a way that it shut down. I believe we as humans have become more social, but less interactive. We would rather text someone in the other room than getting up and knocking on their door. We are indeed sleepwalking, but a cliff into cyberspace.

In conclusion, Winner is dead on when speaking of technological somnambulism. There is no doubt that we will not be able to function unless there is a microchip in our brains or something because we believe that more technology equals advancement. But does it? I have heard of the phrase, “Let’s get back to Eden” and one of the ways I heard to do so was through advancement. But when was the last time you read about Adam and Eve connecting to Wi-Fi? Sadly, we will only make this whole deeper, but I would suggest stepping back and regaining the physical human values that we once had; back when we were all fully human.