Henry David Thoreau's 'We Do Not Riding The Railroad'

Riding the Railroad

Henry David Thoreau once wrote “the railroad once said “we do not ride the railroad; it rides upon us” reflecting on the society at that time, which was abruptly industrialized. With this quote he was warning the readers that recently invented technologies only corrupt humans by doing all the labors that we once used to do. Because of this, humans tend to be more controlled by the technologies, in this case the railroad, rather than controlling them. In society today, there are countless number of “railroad” like technologies have been introduced, and smartphones are one of the greatest example. Smartphone have become so much part of our lives that often times, it is not so difficult to find smartphones “riding upon us”. For example 64 percent of Americans own a smartphones and 63 percent of them checks it at least every hour. The numbers are even higher when it comes to college students, more than 70 percent of college students own a smartphone, and 77 percent checks them first thing in the morning. Having read these statistics, one might perhaps conclude that, smartphones do controll college students, and because they are so hooked up to their phones, it decreases the productivity of the students. Although this is true that it is so easy for a student to be obsessed with twitter and instagram, but when smartphones and its features are used effectively and not excessively, they actually enhance the productivity. There are two major reasons, one is the