Jonathan Franzen starts off his essay by talking about his relationship with his phone. Franzen was very impressed in how far technology had advanced in three years when he got his new phone. He says that a phone and a person have a very unique relationship in that the beloved phone asks for nothing, and gives everything making us feel more powerful. The goal of technology is to "replace a natural world that is indifferent to our wished- a world of hurricanes and hardships and breakable hearts, a world of resistance- with a world so responsive to our wished as to be effectively, a mere extension of the self". He goes on then to talk about how "technology is troubled by real love and it has no choice but to trouble love in return". Our lives through technology are filtered because we often seem different than who we truly are on the internet. He challenges one to expose your whole self not just the things people would "like" on Facebook, and if these things are rejected, it will be painful. Furthermore his goal in this essay is to contrast real love and narcissistic tendencies of technology.
This essay relates to the "Is Google Making us Stupid" essay. Franzen talks about the artificial love in technology, and the artificial "liking" on Facebook, while Carr talks about technology building an artificial intelligence. Staying in your room simply gloating around on technology all day is a completely different thing than living life in the real world. On the internet you could fall in artificial love with things that will treat you with everything instantly and in the real world you could fall in actual love with things, and who knows what could happen to you there.
Question: Does he think this is a bad thing?
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