Technology eliminates many of the social obligations that one tried to enforce prior to the infinite media that permits one to chat with friend miles away and the TV delivering your news. As Donne J. Haraway states in The Cyborg Manifesto, an essay in her book Simians, Cyborgs, and Women:
But these excursions into communication sciences and biology have been at a rarefied level; there is a mundane, largely economic reality to support my claim that these sciences and technologies indicate fundamental transformations in the structure of the world for us. (165)
Humanity values communication in order to make social ties since we all live so far apart, and now we have that in its ultimate sense. One can believe that relationships also have less meaning when you can somehow connect with someone on a message board or some online dating service. Thus, technology becomes a simulation of the sexual gap for many people who lack the biological function or emotional drive to seek these relationships. Barron women may still have a child and there might be a hope to remove that STI that your doctor diagnosed. You can even go as far as to find your pornography online, eliminating the awkward and usually embarrassing moment of buying a magazine in a store, especially if you are a minor.
You can be anyone you want to be on the web, as no one knows who you are, and unfamiliar connections set in. You parent always told you to make friends, but that was hard when everyone at school does not like you. However, games like Second Life and World of Warcraft help you create your own fantasy with those who also assume false identities. Social responsibility dies and maybe a hundred years from now, we won't even have to leave our rooms to live. We will use live video feed to communicate, and advanced computers will organize mating in order to cycle through the best genes for natural selection.
Last modified 17 November 2006