Robotic creations are now a common 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 simple 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 moral questions do such creations bring out? Is it okay to be so reliant on machines? My worry is not with robots taking over our lives in any horror movie sense, I don’t expect batting cages to come to life and try to kill us all, but our reliance on machines to do the work that was done by humans less than a few decades years ago marks a rapid 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 Americans, for example, or even Europeans who lived in a rural setting. These people may have seen around only a few hundred faces in their lifetime, while we may interact with that many humans within the course of just a year, and the amount of faces we see can hardly be counted.

While the differences may seem insignificant, it has to be admitted that such a way of life will have effects on our brains themselves. It’s been discovered 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 effect on our lives? If we think about this in terms of convenience and surface happiness, there’s no doubt that it has. It has never been easier to have food and entertainment delivered to our door within minutes of our desire to have them. But this, obviously, is only true for those in wealthy situations within developed countries. In order to exist like this, there are others in poorer countries who must do the work of making the shoes, connecting the machines and building the boxes. It goes without saying that the majority of these workers will be poorly paid for their work, as those in the developed areas would be unwilling to pay a larger 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 an almost abusive relationship, with humans simply taking what they can view around them and claiming it to be his own.

Undoubtedly, such a destructive relationship with the world around us has begun to have largely 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 wish that we are able to see this reality before it’s too late.