Technology has a force over the daily lives of Americans as religion depicted the lives of the crusaders of the 12th century. As new technology is introduced to the people, our reliance on the technology increases. Our lives begin to revolve around the products why buy and use, and are yet to be released. A good example is the integration of technology for medical use, and how it changed the entire field and economy of medical practice.
American medical practice was greatly influenced by Dr. Benjamin Rush, who stressed that relying on nature held back the improvement of medicine. He convinced other doctors and patients that “American diseases were tougher than European disease and required tougher treatment” (97). Rush used methods such as bloodletting and large amounts of mercury for patients with the yellow fever. These appeared to work and Americans began to accept Rush’s radical ways of curing disease. “Americans met the challenge by eagerly succumbing to the influence of Rush: they accepted the imperatives to intervene, to mistrust nature, to use the most aggressive therapies available” (97).
These ideas were amplified with the introduction to technology to the practice. One of the earliest inventions that had a great impact was the stethoscope, invented by Rene-Theophile-Hyacinthe Laennec in 1816. As doctors began to use the stethoscope to diagnose patients, they began listening to their body but not what the patient had to say. This trend followed through with the introduction of other tools into the doctors office such as the ophthalmoscope (to see into the patient’s eyes), laryngoscope (to inspect larynx) and the X-ray. Doctors began to rely more on machines and tools than their own knowledge about the patient and relationship with the patient. “Medicine is about the disease, no the patient. And, what the patient knows is untrustworthy; what the machine knows is reliable” (100). The entire system has changed to support this way of thinking. Doctors now feel liable to use every means of diagnostics they have available in order to keep themselves being liable for malpractice. The fear of the patient taking the doctor to court exemplifies the very fact that the relationship between the patient and the doctor has become less humane and more robotic, with no sympathy or care on the patient’s or doctor’s side.
This aggressive nature for using technology can be extended into the rest of American culture. “Nature is an implacable enemy that can be subdued only by technical means” (102). We begin to solve all our problems with machines, and make all our processes numerical and simplified using machines. We embrace any new machine which makes our lives easier with trust without thinking of the consequences. The introduction of the image through the creation of graphic interfaces such as tv’s and computers. Images for the first time could be recreated in a mass quantity to distribute to the general public. Obviously there was a economic drive behind the distribution which was the advertising of products to consumers. This created a psychological and aesthetic science behind advertising, flooding peoples lives with images. As these images continue to flash in American eyes they begin to loose their value. Symbols such as the statue of liberty or god have been showed so many times that when someone thinks about the statue of liberty they no longer feel the relevance of the symbol to their lives. Everything has become a result of corporate advertising. “The constraints are so few that we may call this a form of cultural rape, sanctioned by an ideology that gives boundless supremacy to technological progress and is indifferent to the unraveling of tradition” (170). Technology is slowly eating away at our values and ideals by creating a new artificial world we live in with new definitions of what is important to an individual person.
“Can a nation preserve its history, originality, and humanity by submitting itself to the sovereignty of a technological thought world?” (183). This is the question Postman brings on us in his last chapter and gives us with a few ideas how to make this possible. He paints the picture of a resistance fighter which is the optimal way of thinking to overcome the intellectual demise caused by technology. It involved an individual free of technological bias and holds onto true values of family, common sense and humanity.
The corruption caused by technology can be seen everyday in the daily life of an American. The values of society have been manipulated through technology by the greedy corporations who’s only goal is to obtain money at any cost. The effects can be seen in the dreams of the average child who has grasped the situation he has been born into, as his goals are predetermined by the media to becoming rich one day at all costs. We are institutionalized from kindergarten and enter the system which tells us we need to get a job and contribute to the corporate world, or end up with no money no food and a narrow path of options that lead to jail. Men and woman are objectified in many ways, defined by the cars they own and houses they live in, enforced by the media-created culture of the American people. We enter the world with innocent minds and then become slaves to the corporate struggle as we try and become accepted into society by accepting the lives presented to us and drop our natural human values in the process.
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