Technology and Life: Reflections from Colorado
It has been more than a week since i come to one of the coldest places in United States, Colorado. As this is my first time visiting United States, i found myself a bit hard to adapt with current local weather, social, and life style. But one thing helped me most in adjusting myself in this new environment, the Internet.
"You can google for almost everything in the United States." Public transportation, local forecast, supermarket nearby, banks and ATMs, prayer times and qibla direction, local masjid, halal food stores, and many other things. This is my first time feeling that my smart phone works truly smart and the fancy apps in it do show professional works, where ever and when ever i need them.
Those helpful facilities provided by the Internet, for sure, do not come with no impact (be it in positive or negative ways). Internet, and current technological developments in general, has created "a screen generation," who live from screen to screen. People now living within and moving between screens (handphone's, tv's, computer's, tablet's, ATM's, advertisings', price lists', etc). This, furthermore, creates a kind of "a screened social interaction" which you do not need physical interaction to socially interacting. All you need is a computer's or phone's screen.
What is more interesting of this phenomenon, it gives birth to what so called "screened religiosity." Some researches show that People find their needs of religious information through their computers' screen, they find their selves somehow more religious in the screens then outside them, even, they find their God inside and through the screens.Aders' statement in 1980 saying that "technology is the subject of history," and Schelsky's view in 1979 stating that "through the construction of scientific and technical civilization, a new fundamental relationship of person to person is created," today find their relevance.
Regardless of the theoretical debates on 'the supremacy of technology,' we ourselves decide how will we live our life and how will we use technology in our daily life. Different country, will for sure shows different phenomenon. Maturity in behaving toward the changing phenomenon caused by technology is the most important key in this regard.
*19th Boulder, COmenunggu subuh
