Robotic creations are now an everyday part of our lives. Things such as computers, cars and even baseball softball pitching machines are utilized to help us in our day -to -day life. It’s quite easy to stand inside a batting cage and hit a round of balls that appear to be identical to those pitched by a real human. What kind of ethical questions do such possibilities bring out? Is it okay to be so reliant on machines? My worry is not with machines taking over our lives in any horror movie sense, I don’t expect batting cages to come to life and try to kill us all, but our reliance on machines to do the work that was completed by humans less than a hundred years ago marks a massive change in the way we live our lives. This behavior is worth pondering.

Obviously, with the inception of the internet, our whole mode of being has been altered. It’s hard to consider what it would have been like for Native Canadians, for example, or even British who lived in a rural setting. These people would have seen perhaps only a few hundred people in their lifetime, while we may interact with that many humans within the time of just a year, and the amount of faces we see can hardly be counted.

While the differences may seem insignificant, it has to be acknowledged that such a way of living will have effects on our brains themselves. It’s been reported that the brain is physically altered by the sensations and experiences it receives, so to say what we view changes our brain is in no way over the top.

Has the growing use of machines had a positive effect on our lives? If we think about this in terms of convenience and surface happiness, there’s no doubt that it has. It has never been easier to have food and entertainment delivered to our door within minutes of our wanting to have them. But this, of course, is only true for those in wealthy situations living in developed countries. In order to live like this, there are others in poorer countries who must do the task of making the shoes, joining the machines and packing the boxes. It goes without saying that most of these workers will be poorly paid for their work, as those in the developed areas would be unwilling to pay a larger price for things which we feel are our right.

Along with the exploitation of other humans is the exploitation of non-human life. The way we act towards nature appears to be an almost abusive relationship, with man simply taking what they can view around them and staking it out as his own.

Undoubtedly, such a destructive relationship with the world surrounding us has begun to have largely damaging effects on the way we’re able to live our own lives of comfort. When the natural world and machine come into conflict, it is nature that humans will have to have more in order to go on living. One would wish that we are able to see this occur before it’s too late.

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