Robotic creations are now an everyday part of our lives. Things such as computers, toasters and even baseball softball pitching machines are used to help us in our day -to -day life. It’s quite easy to stand inside a batting cage and hit a round of balls that appear to be the same to those pitched by a real human. What kind of moral questions do such creations bring out? Is it fine to be so reliant on machines? My worry is not with robots taking over our lives in any horror movie sense, I don’t predict batting cages to come to life and try to kill us all, but our dependence on machines to do the work that was done by humans less than a few decades years ago marks a massive change in the way we conduct our lives. This change is worth thinking about.

Obviously, with the creation of the internet, our whole way of thinking has been altered. It’s hard to imagine what it would have been like for Native Canadians, for example, or even British who lived in a country setting. These people would have seen around only a few hundred faces in their lifetime, while we may talk with that many humans within the course of just a year, and the number of faces we see can hardly be counted.

While the changes may seem insignificant, it has to be acknowledged that such a way of life will have effects on our brains themselves. It’s been reported that the brain is physically changed by the sensations and experiences it receives, so to say what we perceive changes our brain is in no way over the top.

Has the growing use of robotics had a positive impact on our lives? If we think about this in terms of convenience and superficial happiness, there’s no question that it has. It has never been easier to have food and diversions delivered to our house within minutes of our wanting to have them. But this, of course, is only true for those in wealthy situations within developed countries. In order to live like this, there are others in poorer countries who must do the task of making the shoes, connecting the machines and packing the boxes. It goes without saying that most of these workers will be unfairly paid for their work, as those in the developed countries would be unwilling to pay a higher price for things which we feel are deserved.

Along with the exploitation of other humans is the exploitation of non-human life. The way we treat nature appears to be a near abusive relationship, with humans simply taking what they can see around them and claiming it to be his own.

Undoubtedly, such a negative relationship with the world around us has begun to have largely damaging effects on the way we’re capable of living our own lives of comfort. When nature and machine come into conflict, it is nature that humans will need more in order to go on living. One would hope we are able to see this reality before it’s too late.

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