According to the lecture, “Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs suggest that all humans have needs that exist on the hierarchy. The theory suggests that as our lower-level needs are met, we begin to focus on meeting our upper-level needs”. The needs are broken up into separate categories from; physiological needs, safety needs, belongingness/love needs, esteem needs, and self actualization. As society continues to evolve and innovate with technology, so have the way we look at our needs. 

First and most important need would be physiological needs. That would include food, water, warmth, shelter and sleep. Majority of people today either order groceries online to their house or some grocery stores like amazon fresh only use sensors and scanners so the ability to check out in those stores have changed. With people’s busy schedule the ability to get groceries without physically stepping foot into stores is a monumental time saver. One other need that I personally use is warmth and rest. My house is set to a certain temperature range and during the winters without that the house would be unbearable. I have just recently placed temperature sensors near my water lines because during last winter my pipes started to freeze. As a new homeowner I didn’t know that frozen pipes can lead to them bursting. Which would mean no direct line to water. Another thing that I use is a sleep apnea machine. That means that sometimes when I sleep my breathing sometimes stops. That is scary and sometimes fatal so having the ability to have technology available to support our basic needs is valuable. 

Second basic need would be safety and security. The feeling of being safe and secure should be something hopefully everyone can achieve. For example during my sophomore year at Old Dominion I lived in a rental just a couple blocks from campus. One night one of my roommates heard a noise outside but living so close to campus we brushed it off. The next day I woke up and as I was getting ready for work we were missing our living room 65 inch tv. We called the cops and noticed that one of the windows was open. They never showed up and for the next couple days the feeling surrounding the house just didn’t feel right until we installed security cameras at both front and back doors. My feeling of safety is knowing that my house is secure from outside threats. Another person’s safety needs might be their physical health. The technological advances that are able to monitor your vitals on the go is astonishing. I have seen people have heart rate monitors in their living room and it immediately informs an app on their phone to see if they are at safe levels. Some monitor blood sugar and I have seen some applications plan out a fitness routine from the vitals they collected. 

Next we start to step into psychological needs. The need for belongingness and love like intimate relationships and friends. I think that these needs have been impacted the most from the advancement of technology. Before the invention of the internet, the people that you interact with on a daily basis was smaller. Most of them would be people that lived near you and people that you work with. Nowadays with the innovation of social media, the ability to interact with people from anywhere at any time is just with a click of a button. For example, if I wanted to meet a girl I would have to go out to a bar or a friend’s party. With apps like Tinder, Bumble and Hinge the dating pool just multiplied. At an average bar during happy hour, you might see fifty to a hundred people that night. On these apps you can expand your search radius to miles and the amount of people is endless. Yes, the ease of meeting people that you have never met before is simpler but does that actually improve our experience? I am not for or against the idea of these apps but at some point having access to this easily may cheapen face to face interaction. It’s like they say, “Would you rather be a big fish in a small pond or a small fish in a big lake?”

Next would be esteem needs which is the feeling of prestige and accomplishment. With the rise in popularity in Twitter or X I think that this need has been easily attainable. This need is mostly about respect. How other people see you and the daily upkeep of making jokes or having polar opinions might give a person a sense of prestige. Having a multitude of people praise or encourage this kind of behavior might fulfill this need but my only question is how much is too much. Too much of a good thing can also become a bad thing and having too much praise might change the way a person acts or the addiction of having it might become detrimental to the person’s psychological health. 

Lastly we reach self fulfillment needs. According to the lecture, “The self actualization principle is achieving one’s full potential, including creative activities”. Out of the rest of the pyramid I think this one sounds the least like a need but more like a goal. I don’t think everyone achieves their full potential or even knows what that entails. With today’s technological advances I do see this happen more often. Whether it is a person deciding to open a business, the ability to create a web page and advertise it on social media now is just the click of a button. Another example would be comedians and performers of the arts. I have seen comedians like Andrew Shultz not be able to get Netflix and other deals with cable companies so what he does is just release his own stand ups and crowd work bits to YouTube, Instagram and other platforms. Then that begins to cultivate a following without the help of a big corporation. That is why the pod cast scene and other types of art like that have grown at such a rapid pace. 

At each level of Maslow’s Hierarchy, technology has played a critical role. At some stages it has drastically helped our basic needs and at other steps it has further propelled us to become addicted to it. They’re both positives and negatives that come out of the advancement to technology. I am an advocate in making technology make our day to day more convenient but I am hesitant to see how these changes will affect our culture.