Analysis Of Jaymi Hedges 'Balancing Happiness In The Digital Age'

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We live in a high tech world. The rapid change and seemingly exponential evolution of digital technology can leave consumers with a mixed-bag of emotions. Confusing combinations of scorn, bewilderment or arousal can overlap while we gape in awe the next best-thing. Advances can happen so quickly that what was cutting edge this morning can be tritely familiar by the time our afternoon coffee rolls around. Both Jaymi Heimbuch’s “Balancing Happiness in the Digital Age” and Chris Hedges’ “Retribution for a world lost in screens” take a skeptical look at ever advancing digital technologies while exploring the themes of responsibility and consumerism in the modern era. “Balancing Happiness in the Digital Age” focuses on how to find
She is unsure whether purchasing an e-reader would conflict with her morals surrounding consumerism. Struggling with weighing the merits of making her high-tech purchase against her aversion to purchasing too many electronic devices, she shares her feeling that “the more electronics we buy, the more burdened we feel by them” (1). She seems to feel a bit silly but the thing is, she really wants one. Not to be controlled by simple desires, Heimbuch needs to get to the root of why she is compelled to make the purchase. She is drawn to the ideas of reducing clutter, traveling without being burdened by heavy books and living a minimalist lifestyle. In contrast, she points out that e-readers make it dangerously simple to make impulse purchases, and that the digital medium can reduce the emotional value of owning a book. Looking at the larger debate over the benefits and drawbacks of e-readers, we see that on one hand, there are those who believe a digital screen will never replace the nostalgia that comes from holding a genuine ink-on-paper book. On the other hand, we see those that take a minimalist approach and view an e-reader as a great way to reduce the amount of extra stuff in their lives. Others still, maintain that we should simply take a realistic approach and embrace the new technology rather than try to fight it. Heimbuch takes all of these opinions to heart before ultimately deciding to make the
I agree with the notion that people, in general, seem to be willing to give up their own ekstasis, so long as they can tweet about it or post a video to Vine. However, I tend to find Hedges’ argument tiresome. Though skeptics would be right to question the intentions of multinational organizations that push technology on the masses, technology itself is not the villain. Similar worries have been voiced repeatedly throughout history. During the Hellenistic period, the great philosopher Plato warned that the written word itself would sabotage the minds of the literate. Plato cautioned “If men learn this, it will implant forgetfulness in their souls; they will cease to exercise memory because they rely on that which is written, calling things to remembrance no longer from within themselves, but by means of external marks. What you have discovered is a recipe not for memory, but for reminder” (Plato 274). Surely powerful, nefarious men have used the written word to control and manipulate the world throughout history, but does that mean we should promote illiteracy as a means of freedom? Surely Hedges would not go that far, but it is the case that whenever new forms of media arise, it’s almost guaranteed that an articulate, thought provoking academic will come forward detailing how “this” particular benchmark of human progress will spell disaster for us all. Hedges places