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Samantha McCullough
10 April, 2015
Stupid Smartphones
There is no denying the benefits that society has gained from technological advances but
as with everything in life, we must receive everything in moderation. Are some of these
innovations becoming a thorn in the side of mankind? With each breakthrough addition of a new
idea or product, the work ethic of a dying breed of self-sufficient people is diminishing. From the
1950s to the present the changes introduced to society came at lightning speed to a people who
barely had a chance to comprehend one change before the next one was hauled into their life. In
the daily lives of humankind, it is obvious that the dependence on technology has sneaked its
way into many aspects of their culture. Technology has influenced the way humans
communicate, the way we perceive and retain information, how we express our performing and
visual arts, and is even beginning to affect how we write literature.
Communication and interaction between people is what spreads ideas, what develops
relationships, and above all what keeps our world spinning. Technology has done wonders for
our communication skills to some degree, allowing us to interact instantly via text messaging or
instant messaging with people that could be on another continent or right down the street. It has
allowed us to instantly converse with words on a screen, but at the same time is inhibiting our
ability to communicate face to face. In the course of real, live conversation with another human
being, there are so many things to take into consideration. There is body language, facial
expression, articulation, and an authenticity to the moment. Alena Hall quotes Tara Kennedy
Kline, the author of Stop Raising Einstein, in a Huffington Post article saying,

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I think that theres a lot of things we dont understand how to have conversations about
anymore, she says, I think our kids are kind of getting addicted to it. Our kids dont
know how to have conversations. There are simple social skills that we are completely
losing an entire generation of because we only do anything online (Hall).
Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are just a few examples of media sites that inhibit our ability to
live in the moment. We are now unable to give something or someone our complete attention.
Henry Jenkins, an MIT-based researcher for the MacArthur Foundations Digital Media, quotes
Linda Stone, who has been a top level executive at Apple and has led research at Microsoft on
Virtual Worlds, in saying, Giving devices our complete partial attention has begun to decrease
our ability to focus on tasks, and a recent New York Times poll shows that stress levels increase
along with the use of mobile devices (Jenkins). As the decades pass, society becomes more and
more dependent upon technology to guide them and appease them however, we are not
seemingly aware of the very silent but deadly draw that certain technology has upon us.
Our attention span is interrupted by the need for technology. The inability to focus for
very long is becoming an issue because advances in todays new innovations are affecting the
modern human brain. Computers, smartphones, and televisions are shaping the way we
understand, read, and learn. A book called, The Shallows: What the Internet Is doing to Our
Brains by Nicholas G. Carr provides a detailed discussion along with specific examples of how
technology is not only affecting our ability to focus but also our ability to retain information. He
says,
Im not thinking the way I used to think. I feel it most strongly when Im reading. I used
to find it easy to lose myself in a book or a lengthy article. Thats rarely the case

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anymore. Now my concentration starts to drift after a page or two. I get fidgety, lose the
thread, begin looking for something else to do (Carr 5).
Carr continues to explain how he uses the Internet for everything, from shopping, to writing, to
traveling, to paying his bills. He explains how Technology and the World Wide Web has chipped
away at his sense of concentration and contemplation (6). Carr mentions another author who
shares his thoughts on how technology is affecting us by referencing Marshall McLuhan, the
author of Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. McLuhan is quoted from his novel
when he says, the electric media of the twentieth century was {is} breaking the tyranny of text
over our thoughts and senses (1). Carr interprets McLuhans statement as that technology offers
us everything instantaneously. He further interprets the statement by making an analogy that he
used to be a scuba diver (metaphorically speaking) diving for further knowledge, yet now he is
simply a jet ski driver, skimming over the vast surface of the deep ocean (7). Carr used to delve
into books, novels, and encyclopedias to find his information, but now that all the information he
needs is at the click of mouse, there is no motivation to read in context anymore.
Instead of losing oneself in a great book and exploring the context of the information an
author has to offer, we would rather just watch the film. Movies and visual arts influence us
because the arts are how we express and entertain ourselves. Entertainment is becoming a
necessity because films and videos are trumping novels and encyclopedias these days. Movie
stars are iconic idols for some individuals and what they say and do on a T.V. screen sways the
thoughts, motives, and morals of society. A movie released in 2013 called Disconnect, written
by Andrew Stern and directed by Henry-Alex Rubin, incorporated a few different stories each
involving characters whose lives have reached a crisis exacerbated by their dependence on
technology at the expense of real human connection. First, there is a couple who has recently lost

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a baby, and instead of grieving together they turn away from each other while further losing
themselves in online distractions. Second, there are two boys who use the power of social media
to take advantage of another boy's loneliness and isolation -- itself partly caused by his father's
obsession with work via texting and email (Disconnect). This motion picture illustrates how easy
it is for humans to allow technology to influence them and change the way they interact, it also
gives people a false perception of the world while pulling them away from a sense of who they
are and what really matters.
Expression comes in many forms, one of which being visual art as well as performing art.
Visual art is being manipulated by technology in both positive and negative ways. Technology is
affecting creativity positively because it is allowing artists to produce master-pieces more
conveniently. New computer technology provides artists with millions of different kinds of
software, techniques, and contraptions that make the process of creation more suitable for a
specific type of design. Digital art is becoming more and more popular among artists today
because influences and ideas come almost instantly from internet and social media sources
leaving less room for artists to create and imagine designs of their own. A man named Mohamed
Zaher, addresses the challenges of presenting original and innovative ideas that artists face today
in his article titled The Impact of Digital Technology on Art and Artists (Zaher). Zaher addresses
artists dilemma when he says,
The flame of creativity dies out and the tide of inspirational revelation recedes and the
building blocks of imagination freeze at the bottom of the artists psyche, as they
gradually transform into a shallow abstract translation of a constellation of enormous
technological capabilities, devoid of any creative substance (Zaher).

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Technology is a great tool that almost every artist today uses to enhance, detail, and perfect their
work, however, artists must not lose sight of what the masters of the past painted and sculpted
with. Skills such as mixing paint to create shades of colors is slowly being replaced with buying
the specific hue at the store to save time, and instead of taking the time to illustrate a very
detailed or complex piece, people would rather print the image out on a computer.
An example of a specific area in which technology has influenced art is a program called
Photoshop. Photoshop is defined as, alter{ing} (a digital image) with Photoshop software or
other image-editing software especially in a way that distorts reality (as for deliberately
deceptive purposes) (Webster). Technology has changed the way society looks at female
bodies, deceptively portraying them to be super skinny while smiling with perfect, windblown
hair, clear, radiant skin, and a blossoming, curving bodice. Jennifer Lawrence states reality very
clearly when she commented on her pictures from the Dior ads, she said, Of course its
Photoshop; people dont look like that (Doben). Photoshop has the technology to make anyone,
especially cover models, look thinner, taller, unblemished, with brighter eyes and whiter teeth;
seemingly perfect (Wilson). Painting, drawing, and reshaping a persons image is considered art
by todays beauticians according to Vivian Diller of the Huffington Post when she says they
believe that Photoshop is essentially creative art, a freedom not to be denied for any reason,
regardless of its psychological or physical impact (Diller). Deceiving a society, and altering what
women or anyone actually looks like is not art, it is technology taking over and manipulating art
to distort reality. Magazines such as Vogue, Fashion, and Elle are all examples of highly
enhanced images of photo-shopped models who give a false sense of reality to women all over
the world as a result of technological influence.

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Issues with losing originality and the raw imagination of the human mind is not only
prevalent in todays visual arts and performing arts, but also in literature and composition.
Fiction especially has been impacted by todays growing supply of gadgets. An author by the
name of Marisha Pessl, who has published two known novels, expresses her viewpoint on the
influence technology has had on her writing when she says, The trouble with technology is that
it eradicates a characters ability to be lost, and its the state of being in the dark and the journey
toward understanding that has given rise to the greatest stories ever written (Pessl). Pessl goes
on to give specific examples of classic stories (such as Jane Eyre or Heart of Darkness) that
would cease to exist if any smart phone were present that would reveal mysterious whereabouts
or uncover secrets about mad first wives (Pessl). A quote from Tom Clancy in his famous novel
The Hunt for Red October, speaks volumes when he writes, It was one thing to use computers
as a tool, quite another to let them do the thinking for you (Clancy). It is true that technology
has influenced some pretty good stories in the past, such as DreamWorks Transformers and the
infamous action character, James Bond. As fiction continues to evolve, some of the greatest
stories of all time are still those set in the past, stories that require an author to hunt for
information, and swim beyond the oceans surface (as Nicholas Carr described in his scuba diver
metaphor.)
Technology today is not only used to entertain people today but is also taking on the task
of storing our precious memories. It is relied upon to store every beach vacation photo, happy
birthday video, and songs that gets us through a hard workout session at the gym. Everyday there
is a new update, version, app, and device for saving pictures, videos and music on your iPod,
mobile device, and laptop. Moving those precious moments at the beach and all the acquired
music from device to device is taking a chance on losing those pictures and audio files forever. A

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short story by Kim Z. Dale, makes society really re-think about how they store their precious
memories, when she tells her fictional story titled My best friend is a book and she's dying
(again). Dale metaphorically talks about a device that is placed on the main characters, wifes
heart as the wife passes away. The device is supposed to capture her soul before she dies and
then print her soul into a book that the main character could keep forever. The husband has a
choice between keeping it as a digital file on his phone or receiving a printed copy of his wifes
soul. He chooses the electronic copy (thinking it more convenient) and later realizes what a
mistake he made. As he continuously updates his phone, the book becomes harder to open and
malfunctions more and more. The last words of Dales short story leave the reader thinking very
hard on what they literally mean, she says, One of these days the book will no longer be
readable. One of these days the spinning hourglass will just keep spinning. One of these days my
wife, my best friend, will die again (Dale). Technology is one thing that will continue to update
and change and evolve every day for the rest of human existence. Pictures and memories are
moments that should last a lifetime, moments that should not be subject to change every time
there is a new renovation thrown at society.
Human dependence on technology has influenced the way we interact with one another,
how we read and comprehend information, our expression of performing and visual arts, and has
sneaked into the literature of our time period. Todays modern society has seen change after
change in their culture due to the injection of technological change that dates back to the 1950s.
Beginning in the 90s, the introduction of the internet and cellular phones to the masses marked
the beginning of a downward spiral in our society. Improvements in communication, innovation,
and production have been tremendously affected by technology, ultimately giving people a
perfect opportunity not use their brains or their imaginations. Jonathan Sacks summarizes our

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dilemma very clearly when he says, Technology gives us power, but it does not and cannot tell
us how to use that power. Thanks to technology, we can instantly communicate across the world,
but it still doesn't help us know what to say, (Sacks).

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Works Cited
Carr, Nicholas G. The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our
Brains. New York: W.W. Norton, 2010. Books.google.com. 2010. Web. 7 Apr.
2015.
Clancy, Tom. The Hunt for Red October. N.p.: n.p., n.d. N. pag. Goodreads.com.
Web. 20 Jan. 2015.
Dale, Kim Z. "My Best Friend Is a Book and She's Dying (again)." Chicagonow.com.
N.p., 14 Feb. 2014. Web. 7 Apr. 2015.
Diller, Vivian. "Is Photoshop Destroying America's Body Image?"
HuffingtonPost.com. Huffington Post, 8 July 2011. Web. 3 Apr. 2015.
Disconnect. Dir. Andrew Stern. Perf. Jason Bateman, Jonah Bobo, Haley Ramm. LD
Entertainment, 2013. DVD.
Hall, Alena. "Social Media Is Actually Making You Socially Awkward." The
Huffington Post. N.p., 19 June 2014. Web. 4 Mar. 2015..
Jenkins, Henry. Multitasking and Continuous Partial Attention: An Interview with
Linda Stone (Part One)." Web log post. Henryjenkins.org. Henry Jenkins, 19
Nov. 2010. Web. 5 Apr. 2015.
McMullan, Thomas. "How Technology Rewrites Literature." The Guardian [United
Kingdom] June 2011: n. pag. Theguardian.com. 23 June 2014. Web. 17 Mar.
2015.
Pessl, Marisha. "Writing Bytes." New York Times. N.p., 31 Oct. 2013. Web. 7 Mar.

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2015.
Sacks, Jonathan. "The Limits of Secularism and the Search for Meaning." Web log
post. Abc.net.au. N.p., 17 May 2012. Web. 9 Apr. 2015..
Webster. "Photoshop." Merriam.webster.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 6 Apr. 2015.
Wilson, Eric. "Smile and Say No Photoshop." New York Times [New York City] 27
May 2009, E1 sec.: n. pag. Nytimes.com. 29 May 2009. Web. 5 Apr. 2015..
Zaher, Mohamed. "The Impact Of Digital Technology On Art And Artists." Midan
Masr. Tarek Shoeb, n.d. Web. 4 Apr. 2015.