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10 - Technology and well-being: designing the future

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 December 2009

By
Yair Amichai-Hamburger
Edited by
Yair Amichai-Hamburger
Yair Amichai-Hamburger
Affiliation:
Sammy Ofer School of Communications, Interdisciplinary Center, Israel
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Summary

This book has demonstrated that technology has enhanced many aspects of our lives, but its effects are complex. This final chapter will discuss how we can increase the positive impact of technology and minimize some of its more dangerous aspects. In the first chapter, Rodman and Fry utilized the symbols of Yin and Yang to demonstrate the contradictory effects technology can have on our well-being. They pointed out, for example, that while portable music players such as the iPod provide great pleasure to their users, they may also isolate listeners by allowing them to tune out the world around them. Amichai-Hamburger and Barak (in Chapter 2) suggested that the Internet can provide an excellent psychological environment enabling people to find support for many kinds of difficulties they may be facing. However, this same psychological environment may create addictive behavior among its users.

This chapter will begin by assessing the major roles played by technology within our society. It will ask whether technology has the answers to many of the current and future challenges facing society or whether it is a tool that may be harnessed to achieve our real goals. In other words, is technology a means to an end or does it constitute the end? This chapter will initially explore some of the more worrying aspects of our highly technological society, and then go on to discuss ways in which present technological achievements and those of the future may be used to promote the well-being of the societies in which they operate.

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Technology and Psychological Well-being , pp. 260 - 278
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2009

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