The Chronicle of Higher Education Essay Example for Free

The Chronicle of Higher Education Essay As I stare at the computer I sometimes wonder whether it is staring back at me also. Every word that I type on the keyboard of my computer comes up letter by letter on the screen that I am staring at. Pictures come to life in front of me and they make me cry, laugh and hate. I wake up every morning and turn my computer on. Hours can pass by and I am totally unaware of it. Instead I am immersed into a world of dungeons and dragons, flying cars and spaceships. My computer makes me a God. I create cities and worlds on my computer. I can create a world where there is no pain and suffering, a Nirvana. My computer gives me my own private paradise where I can forget all about my earthly problems. My computer owns me. The technological advancements that come up every hour, every minute, and every second make me fear what new thing will come up next. What will my computer be able to do next? Will it stand up from the table where it rests and come to my bed to wake me up and ask me to play with it? Will the next generation computers be so fast that it will be humans that will require the next upgrade in order to catch up with them? Will I be forced to do my computers homework or do its research for it because it has become so much smarter than me, that I am useless without it? I am glad and grateful for the technological developments that we have right now, the computer especially. There are so many things that I would be unable to do without the aid of computers. I can no longer imagine doing any report or presentation without the help of my trusted computer. A simple paper like this, to be done by hand, would be unthinkable for me. My brain ceases to function once I turn my computer off. I feel that there is a wire somewhere that is connected to the computer and that all thought is derived from the computer. At this point technology becomes a scary concept. I fear that the whole world would come to a stop if the computers would fail for some reason because that is how dependent we have become on technology. The threat of the Millennium Bug sent Tremors into every household and business empire throughout the world. People took all of their money from their accounts and dug shelters in the ground stocked up wall to wall with the necessities to prepare for the Millennium Bug. Billions of dollars were spent to try and prevent computers all over the world from crashing. Governments spent countless hours creating back up plans if the Millennium Bug did indeed hit. The world held their breath on New Years Eve not because they were thrilled about the coming of the Millennium but because everyone was in anticipation to as to whether everything that we did prevented the coming of the Millennium Bug. WE prevented nothing. There was no Millennium Bug. It was a product of our schizophrenic imagination to create such a monster that would bring upon us the end of days; a product of our fears that we cannot live without technology. I am not an advocate of technology as my paper suggests. Instead I am throwing caution in the wind and am suggesting that we use technology with caution and prevent the creation of a society that is not dependent upon technology to live. To be able to live without worrying about technology failing you, to be able to create a report without worrying about what to do when your computers freezes or a blackout happens. References: Fretcher, H. G. (2000); Power up, Don’t Power Down: Barring students form cell phones, my space, and other communication technologies. Once they enter, the classroom is the wrong approach. A better move would be integrating. Those tools into instructions; The journal (Technological Horizons in Education), Vol. 33 Luke, A. D. (2005); Getting the big picture; community science. Methods that capture context; American journal of community psychology Vol. 35. Rees, William E. (1999). Life in the Lap of Luxury as Ecosystems Collapse. The Chronicle of Higher Education, XLV (47), B4–B5 Goldman, S. , Cole, K. Syer, C. (1999). The technology/content dilemma. Paper presented at The Secretary’s Conference on Educational Technology 1999. [on-line] Available: www. ed. gov/technolology/techConf/1999/whitepapers/paper4. html (retrieved March 14, 2008)