Cultural Anthropology Comparison Essay Essay

Two authors published separate articles that discussed the effects of Technology on families and on society in general. These articles are Technology and Social Change: The Effects on Family and Community, written by Jan English-Lueck in 1998 and Communication technologies that will change our lives, written by Graham T. T. Monitor in 2003. However, while both authors discussed the same topic, which is how technology generally affects the lives of people, they differ in the areas that they focused on in their respective articles. Basically, English-Lueck, in his article, claimed that technology has not actually adversely affected the way family members communicate among each other, but has rather enhanced it. According to him, the most significant and most obvious impact of technology on a family is that a person’s working hours extend to his or her work home. In other words, a due to the massive enhancement of technology, a person brings his or her work home when he or she should be allocating that time for his or her family. Based on English-Lueck’s article, while this can initially be viewed as a negative impact, the fact is, technology has actually efficiently improved the way family members communicate among each other. For example, a family camping trip can easily be planned in a single afternoon through the use of a pager or an E-mail as compared to the conventional method of planning it over dinner. Moreover, according to the article, family members who spend most of their time at work can regularly check if their children by paging them or calling them using a cellphone. In addition, a person can respond to emergency duties at work through by using a fax machine. In other words, English-Lueck in his article claims that it is wrong to assume that products of technology has negatively affected the family life since it they have actually made communication between members more convenient and more constant. On the other hand, Graham T. T. Monitor’s article focused on how rapid technology has been increasing over the past years and how this has lead to breaking down barriers in communication. Basically, Monitor said that due to constant technological advancements, which he believes will soon match the speed and power of the human brain, the society and families, both young and old, can easily access all types of digital communication devices that can enable them to communicate among themselves anywhere and anytime. According to him, this is possibly the most important effect on the family because it bridges the distance between family members or kin that are far away from each other. In other words, Monitor claims that the technology is improving so rapidly that people would never have to worry about communication problems. In short, both authors claim that while technological advancements can initially appear overwhelming, it should not adversely affect the way families live their lives but rather improve it. According to them, as technology improves, families should adapt to these new changes and use them to their advantage. Furthermore, both English-Lueck and Montior agreed in principle that these technological enhancements make work, family management, and, most of all, communication more efficient and that these technological trends will continue in the future.