How tech is taking over our natural spaces

Post-COVID commercials say we are heading towards a world in which our new technology infiltrates even the most natural of spaces. Are we ready to give them up?

As a sports writer, I end up watching a lot of TV commercials — specifically ones aimed at men 20-40 years old. Commercials are an interesting way of keeping up to date with society, as they tend to reflect the desires — or at least the perceived desires — of the people they are targeted towards. Desires change, of course, and commercials try to keep up.

Throughout the COVID pandemic, TV commercials adjusted to reflect the reality of everyday life and the changing desires of the people participating. Commercials taught us how to monitor our loved ones through technology and how to order food without leaving our couches. But as COVID has receded, our commercials have changed to reflect a “return to normal.”

You hear that saying a lot: “A return to normal.” It feels good to believe — that we are going to return to the way life was before the pandemic. But it’s not true. There probably is no “normal” in the first place, but that’s a debate for another day. But the idea that we are returning to a world that looked anything like it did before the pandemic is ludicrous.

And plus, the “new normal” — another heavily used term these days — is still up for debate, changing by the day. In fact, we are in the early process of deciding what we want that “new normal” to look like. But commercials have a way of reflecting what the future is going to look like before we know it. It becomes hard to tell if it’s something we actually want or something they want for us. After all, their job is to sell us a way of life that benefits them.

That’s all a very long way of saying that this new Chevrolet commercial caught my eye recently, and made me worried about the future of our society (here I go getting all existential again… welcome back to The Tech Effect!).

Yuck, right? But also, it’s getting at something very real. People have more freedom to work remote than ever before. While many office jobs are calling people back into the office on a hybrid model, most businesses are not making people return full time. And perhaps that’s partly because (North) Americans are working longer hours than ever while going to the office less than ever. From a business perspective, why ruin a good thing?

As silly little employees, we are led to believe that it’s inevitable that we need to work these crazy gruelling hours, so we might as well find a nice place to do it from. And that’s where this commercial comes in to play, showing a pair of friends doing work on their commuters in the mountains, ending with the tagline “Find new workspaces. Find new roads.” Only we know most remote work is done in isolation, not with friends.

I saw another car commercial recently — again, watching sports means I see a lot of car commercials — and in it a couple went car camping and when they finally arrived at their spot in the wilderness and set up their tent, they projected a TV onto the car and started playing video games from it. Sickening stuff.

Natural spaces are supposed to be reserved for nature. We collectively understand that the smartphone has made technology omnipresent and obscured typically natural spaces. But until now the smartphone was always the exception to the rule.

Now, with these car commercials, for example, we are glorifying and normalizing the idea of emerging technologies infiltrating their way into historically natural spaces, transforming them into unnatural spaces, and creating a world in which nature and technology are no longer two separate things. 

The German philosopher Martin Heidegger once said: “Technology tears men loose from the earth and uproots them. The only thing we have left is purely technological relationships.” Pretty intense guy (he was also a Nazi, but alas), but I think what he is alluding to is very prudent here.

“Technology tears men loose from the earth and uproots them” is something we have all come to understand and accept. We in the modern world are no longer in relationship with the earth due to technology. We do not prioritize the earth in our actions nor do most of us wish to live a more natural, elemental existence.

“The only thing we have left is purely technological relationships” is the other side of the coin — the side we are only beginning to flip over and debate to see if we are really okay with only having purely technological relationships. That means no unplugging. No time off. No me time. No rest time for your brain. No purely natural relationships, with the world or with each other.

That means technology is leading to a world in which no more purely human relationships exist, as they are all mediated by technology. And we are already beginning to see the repercussions of that on our relationships. I know that I am in my personal life: I have friends who can’t put the phone down for more than 10 minutes at a time, and I resent them for it. But I know I am guilty of it myself at times. But it’s not just me.

Americans are experiencing a “friendship recession,” and American men have been hit the hardest — you know, the ones these car commercials are aimed at. In fact, the percentage of American men with at least 6 close friends fell by half between 1990 and 2021, while one in five single men say they have no close close friendships.

We are clearly already growing more isolated and our relationships less deep. And the more mediated by technology that our relationships are, the more shallow and less natural they will become. Sure, you can meet people on Slack and Twitter, but you can’t get to the bottom of who they are through technology — for now, at least, you can only do that in person.

Do we want to live in a world in which every relationship is technological? Because we seem to be heading there fast.