People often look to technology to solve problems and then praise it when it appears to offer a solution. What they often miss is that the best solutions to many problems come from people having ethics. Clay Shirky, in Here Comes Everybody, relates the story of Ivanna’s lost cell phone. Her cell phone was lost in a taxi cab and eventually ended up with a girl named Sasha. Ivanna’s friend, Evan, was eventually able to recover the cell phone by using technology such as personal blogs and forums. The author states that without this technology “the phone would have stayed lost” (Shirky, 17). I disagree with this statement. While it is true that technology enabled the phone’s recovery, Evan should never have had to resort to it’s use. The issue lay with Sasha who didn’t return the phone even after she knew who the true owner was. If her moral compass was better adjusted she would have returned the phone without having to be forced to do so. If people have correct ethics and follow their moral compass there would be fewer problems for technology to “solve”.
Works Cited
Shirky, Clay. Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing without Organizations. New York: Penguin, 2008. Print.