Robotic machines 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 everyday life. It’s quite easy to stand inside a batting cage and face a round of balls that appear to be identical to those pitched by a real human. What kind of ethical 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 scary movie sense, I don’t predict batting cages to come to life and try to destroy us all, but our reliance on machines to do the work that was completed by humans less than a few decades years ago marks a rapid change in the way we live our lives. This behavior is worth pondering.

Obviously, with the inception of the internet, our whole mode of being has been altered. It’s hard to imagine what it would have been like for Native Americans, for example, or even British who lived in a country setting. These people would have seen perhaps 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 amount of faces we see can barely be counted.

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

Has the growing use of robotics had a positive impact on our lives? If we consider this in terms of convenience and surface happiness, there’s no doubt that it has. It has not been easier to have food and diversions delivered to our house within minutes of our wanting to have them. But this, obviously, is only true for those in wealthy situations living in developed countries. In order to exist like this, there are others in poorer countries who must do the work of making the shoes, joining the machines and building the boxes. It goes without saying that most of these workers will be unfairly paid for their labor, as those in the developed areas would be unwilling to pay a larger price for things which we feel are our right.

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 view around them and staking it out as his own.

Undoubtedly, such a negative relationship with the world surrounding us has begun to have seriously damaging effects on the way we’re able to live our own lives of comfort. When nature and machine damage each other, it is nature that humans will have to have more in order to go on living. One would hope we are able to see this occur before it’s too late.