Summary: Technological Somnambulism
People are getting used to new technologies every single day, in agreement with the description that invention is the only force that can push civilization forward. Technologies are designed and built in the aim of helping people. It seems perfectly correct to rely on technologies; however, as Langdon Winner argued in his article Technological Somnambulism, technologies are reshaping the world in a direction that might be problematic.
As Langdon described, the society kept altering its foundations to be adjusted to technology advancements. People create new class of crimes and charges to help new technologies function normally under the restriction of law. People’s world are even shaped differently by the vehicles they are in. People view technologies simply as tools that can be picked up and threw down in seconds –they kept focusing on the usage of technologies and fail to see their complexity, which directly leads to a long-term result. Technologies are so broadly applied in life that they are changing the world forcefully and inevitably. But we somehow endure and make way for the advancements. Langdon use the term “technological somnambulism” to describe the silent transformation and yielding the society gave to technologies, every tiny change the society made. As the changes on the fundament of the society accumulate, the whole system may collapse. “The next wave of innovations will surely be our salvation” as Langdon foretold, if people continue to be numb at the subtle reflection that technologies have on their life.
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