American Living Artifacts

America is a diverse country filled with many different cultures and subcultures. Every culture is unique but every culture is represented by its artifacts shared by people in their society. Culture, according to John Bodley in, “An Anthropological Perspective From Cultural Anthropology: Tribes, States, and the Global System,” is composed of at least “three components: what people think, what they do, and the material products they produce(paragraph 5).”Artifacts are material products produced by people can either be an abandoned object or one still in use. Artifacts that are still in use are called living artifacts. I believe that a living popular artifact that best represents America, maybe even the whole world, and the current generation,
This means it is possible for American to die if they don’t have their phone. Although a smartphone primary function is to make calls. Its functions are so much more, from acting as a camera, to navigation, to banking, to internet browsing, to texting, to email, the list is endless. Frankly, a smart phone is a mini computer that is compact and transportable. America is currently very fast passed, and centered on instant gratification and thus have a great dependence on technology. The primary artifact that is capable to satisfying this need is the smart phone. People are constantly on their phone. Instead of properly communicating and socializing with people face to face, the smart phone has replaced healthy communication with its poor alternative of through a lighted glass screen by texting, email, or social media such as facebook, twitter and Instagram. Due to the great dependence on smart phones, without it, people are lost they don’t know how to communicate, or do the normal things in life. As a product of society that tell people what to do, this is why I think a smart phone is a living
Smart phone, no technology in general, affect not just the younger generation but even the older generation. In “ A Baseline Definition of Culture A recent etymology of the word "culture,”” Eric Miraglia, Dr. Richard Law, and Peg Collins said that culture is learned, that “culture, as a body of learned behaviors common to a given human society, acts rather like a template (ie. it has predictable form and content), shaping behavior and consciousness within a human society from generation to generation (paragraph 5).” With the continuous advancements in technology, if the older generation does not become well versed the new gadgets, especially the smart phone, they are unable to perform in society. Smart phones are required in business as means of communications. For example, my father, who works in real estate, says without his iPhone, he would be completely lost and disabled because all his clients and their data are saved on his phone. The smart phone helps people drive to their destination with its navigation features and even helps catalog ones lives with the camera features. Smart phones affect everybody not just the young people but every