Ah! The 21st century. The peak of technology. The computer age. Technology has made our lives so much easier and so much more comfortable…………….

Yes, technology is clever. It’s helpful and well…..so cool. But sometimes I truly wonder whether technology is actually a devil in disguise? I know this might seem silly but if you look beyond the covers, I think you might realize what I’m talking about.

Recently I had to write an essay on the effects of television and I was surfing net for some points and I came across something very interesting. During the world war 1 there was a problem with most of the American soldiers sent for war.’ The problem’ was that the soldiers wouldn’t kill. It was against human nature and they just couldn’t bring themselves to do it. It was found that the soldiers would deliberately miss their targets or simply wouldn’t shoot. And when they did kill, they used to feel guilty for ages. So to solve this, they were given gruesome videos of blood and murders to watch. The problem was solved. Okay, now fast forward a few decades forward. What do we see? Children killing their parents in coldblood, husbands murdering wives, poisoned friends, mothers  strangling their babies. Why do you think humanity has changed so much? Because of the technology of course! Bloodshed, betrayal and murder is so common in films screened today that we are no longer horrified. Gone are days when little girls would scream and cover their eyes in terror. Now we watch these in a hypnotic trance, unblinking eyes, mouths hanging open, fingers unconsciously tracing patterns on the sofa.

And this is not all, the television is actually a business. It is one big business of selling audiences to advertisers. Yes, and not the other way around. It is advertisements and neither the cartoons nor the movies which are actually the cream or the core of the television. The purpose of television programs in the first place is to hold the audiences’ attention long enough to advertise a product.

Think about it, we are spending hundreds of our precious hours infront of television, and for what? to be constantly told that we are too fat unless we buy this exercise machine, that we are too ugly until we use this cream, too deprived and poor unless we do not somehow buy their products. Advertisements create a constant hunger in us. No matter what we buy or use, we are always deprived. We are always lacking. We are always discontent.

Here is another problem with television. It is actually the most effective mind control devise that was ever invented. We are always being fed information and news and how many of us actually question what we are being told? If it something out of fox news or BBC then it’s definitely reliable for most of us. But how many of us have realized the havoc these news stations play with the truth? What finally reaches us is only a part of the truth, and the rest of which they happily made up knowing that the fools sitting in front of the screens are going to believe just about any muck that they are told.

Of course, I am not saying we should all shut down our televisions and read books instead, but we all need to be wiser consumers. We need to think. Not everything we are fed is true or right………..and technology is not always that cool.