Think about it! Technology is an integral part of our world. Its purpose is to help make everyday tasks easier, but instead, it's leading to an unhealthy addiction. New technology comes out daily...Where will this take us? How will it affect us? It's up to us!
Instead of being a tool to make our lives easier, what if technology controlled our lives. Day in and day out our lives were predetermined by it. What if it told us what to eat and how much? What if it told us when we should get up and go to bed? Or is that where we already are? Hint hint: fitness apps and sleep trackers! It most definitely has the potential to escate. It is up to us to make sure that we control technology and not let it control us.
In a future not too far off, our world is destroyed by pollution and in order to save humanity, the government decided to enclose the world in a completely automized virtual world. Every surrounding and surface is an automated video screen. Day in and day out people's routines are the same, as technology regulates every aspect of their lives. (That sounds monotonous and boring, does it not?) In order to make life seem more "real" the creators of this enclosed society added a special element, virtual doppelgangers. The doppelgangers allowed people to be any version of themselves they could imagine. By simply throwing on their revolutionary goggles, you could be whomever you wanted and visit any place you wished. Inside these virtual reality goggles, your main goal was to obtain "bits," which was a form of currency they concocted that could be transferred to power ups for your doppelganger, but the only tangible item you could buy with them in the real world was food. By creating this game, they tried to make life more interesting for the user. However, are the users really accomplishing anything or are they stuck in a virtual timewarp?
This world I mentioned about above is where our society is headed for. Do you want this to be our future? Social media allows us to create any alter ego we want. This sounds nice, however, it is becoming a huge problem within our society today. Ultimately, it allows people to put on whatever persona they would like, hiding their true selves from the world. They can reveal the world the parts of themselves that they want the world to see and hide the ones that they do not like. Thus, we typically only see people's lives through little snippits and highlights. In a sense we already currently have digital doppelgangers of ourselves. It's becoming an addiction.
In order to ensure that we don't end up living our lives through a virtualized reality, we should sometimes put down the laptops and take a step back to look around at the world around us. Sometimes it is nice to escape reality, but we do not want our virtual reality to be our only reality. There is simply no tangible fulfillment in that scenerio. Although we can technically have the world at our fingertips via our laptops, one must ask themselves if it is actually a formative way to go about their lives. Do you want to look like the girl below? That doesn't look fun!
