I am a cyborg afterall

So waaaaaaaay back in week 3 when we had the lecture about cyborgs I was just a tiny bit cynical.
I thought "meh, i'm not a cyborg, i'm not dependent on technology.."
maybe i was just trying to reassure myself that I didn't have to rely on technology.
HOWEVER
the other day I accidentally left my phone at home..
now I'm not really a texting person as such.. I don't often have conversations with people over text.. nor do i really have to find out where people are.. I usually know where my friends hang out.
BUT
without my phone I felt completely cut off from everyone..
It was really quite stressful.
This made me realize how much I depended on this little piece of technology.
I was always slightly scornful when people said things like "oh i can't live without my phone" but it turns out, I can barely just survive.
I think our dependence on technology isn't necessarily a bad thing though.
Being a cyborg seems kinda cool anyway.
however, I DO think that half of it is just mindset. We are not constantly on our phones or ipods or laptops, but we like knowing that it's there, in our bags or pockets so that we can use them at will.

_

Zombification by technology

Technology turns people in to zombies. All uni students love sleep, but how many of us actually get enough? what with our busy social lives, jobs and studies people struggle to get enough shuteye nowadays. Insomnia is an ever increasing problem amongst the youth of today, how many times have you lain in bed late at night, restless, struggling to sleep and then find youself on your laptop? It is important for us as youths to get as much sleep as possible because when we enter the workforce for real sleep will be at a premium anyways and our obsession with social networking sites is setting us up with bad habits! Since we are the what they call "digital natives" the issue of sleep deprivation is more important for us than generations before since our relationship with technology is more commited than any other relationships. So here are some helpful tips to get you to sleep instead of getting on facebook:

1. Exercise! exercise is good way to burn off all the unused energy stored in your body, you dont need to do much go for a walk or something at the very least the fresh air will actually be good for you. You never sleep as well as when you are tired.

2. Read (a book). This is also a good way to stimulate your mind and get that sucker to do some work. Nothing beats the aestheic of reading from a book, stories are constructed specifically to entertain and inform the reader. So forget Mary's latest status and read a book. Worst comes to worst the book will be so boring you'll fall asleep anyways. Its a win/win situation!

3. Turn off your laptop when youre done with it. Laptops can go days on end without actually being turned off. Im pretty sure for some of you the last time yours was actually off was when you forgot to charge it. Leaving you laptop on at all times encourges people to believe they have unfinished business with their laptops which is disturbing all on its own.

4. If your insomnia means you are getting 3 or 4 hours of sleep a night then you need to distance yourself from your personal techs. Keep your cellphone, iPod and laptop out of your room when you go to bed,this will be a little harder to achieve at first this might seem a little extreme but it is a useful habit to have.

As much as we'd like to believe technology and humans have not (yet) evolved to be the perfect cyborg being. If you can seperate yourself from technology during the evening, your social life will not suffer. Dont turn in to a zombie, distance yourself from technology it will be there when you wake up!

Some may say that in this day and age we are dependent on technology to the point where we are considered cyborgs. I, however, disagree, they are merely implements used on a day to day basis. Technology has always influenced human life and culture throughout history and the changes caused by technology can appear quite startling, especially to older generations. New technology is always under scrutiny. For example, in the mid 1900s televisions were turning the population into zombies on a scale unheard of before, and now the next generation of threats to human existence are the Internet, mobile phones/devices and video games. While the illusion exists that humans have reached the point where we cannot live without technology such as cellphones and iPods, if they were actually taken away from you I am pretty sure it would not result in death. The devices are less important to us now, than a farmers tools were, and a navigators compass were several hundred years ago. However I am still worried that the Terminator is going to come and get me one day.