Post Class

Today in class we discussed the quote “hyper stimulated activity” (101) from Habermas’s essay. I think this quote is very relevant to our generation as we talked about. At the end of class, someone brought up the excessive use of Adderall among students. We are expected to do so much in a day; life is sped up more than it ever has been before due to the emergence of media. Has the speed at which we are expected to perform caused the increase for the need of drugs like Adderall? Are humans supposed to be operating at the current pace of life? It is hard to focus with so much going on around us all of the time. We are constantly on our phones, on Facebook, watching television, on our computers. I think some of the only true time spent away from these things is when we are in class or in other circumstances where we are demanded to be off of these devices.

Another aspect of the end of class discussion today was how technology has removed a lot of human practices from our daily lives. It could be debated whether this is a negative thing and we need to go back to the way things were, or if human existence just evolving altogether. I think one way that technology has been detrimental is the distraction that it causes. I know many friends who are unable to maintain focus during a conversation because they are texting on their phones at the same time. Technology has affected human interaction because there is much less face-to-face time than existed in the past. I think that this has contributed to decreased social skills because in person confrontation does not have to occur