The Impact of Technology on Society: An Argumentative Perspective
Technologies can lead our society to a utopian and unimaginable heights or can be our civilisations ruin. In this argumentative essay about technology I’m going to discuss the positives and the negative of technology’s and its effect our society as a whole.
If you remember only a few years ago when there was no GPS or smartphones, the only way to navigate was paper maps. Thanks to new technology’s, you can navigate anywhere and know exactly where to go with constant updates of new roads and traffic. There is an uncountable amount of advantages of this relative new technology over paper maps. You can find where the next servo is if your vehicle is running low on fuel, point out specific attractions and even help you to book a hotel room straight from the app.
Nevertheless, the development of technology through our world has made us dependent on our phones, internet, and hardware. The need of recalling information is quickly becoming more obsolete because most information is becoming more available a giant database. Process like a calculator, reduces the need to perform mental calculations or know how to do mental calculations but because of extremely accessible devices like a smartphone there would be no need to do strain your brain with this. These dependencies decrease human usefulness that can create higher risk of unemployment that occurs in a growing amount of industries. There is a growing amount of devices that can and will make humans obsolete. Researchers at University of Oxford concluded in a 2013 study that predicted that 47% of American jobs are at high risk from automation. In a recent reddit post this person expresses why they fear for the future job market because of automation. He talks about how this will and does take away many of his friends’ jobs. To the extent to be worried of how he is going to support himself let alone a family. Is new technology’s worth it if majority of people can’t even pay for living?
Also, the Internet might be the most significant social communication and biggest wealth of knowledge that humanity has ever accumulated. It enables us to experience different cultures, ideas, and perspectives from every type of person. You can have instantons and on demand access of news, games, or chat with anyone anywhere. It enables us not to wait for what we want and access this information from nearly anywhere. Such resource is so greatly used and advances our civilisation at such a rapid pace. There obvious big upsides to technology talked about by Nick Bilton in his article “the upsides of technology”. He feels that technology biggest upside is how it keeps everybody connected and how we can relive moments with dead relatives through photos and videos. Keeps people you haven’t seen in years connected even people that have passed away through social media and he sees this as an unmissable and undeniable huge advantage of technology.
On the other hand, as technology advances, the more we integrate these tools into parts of our daily life. Large amounts of data on our lives are collected from all of us every day through various different means. From the large amount of information we give to social media to our credit card information when buying on websites, much of our public and private lives are stored somewhere on a SSD, HDD or server. If there is a breach of this data, then anyone could use are private information, like where we work, where we live, and who are friends and family are. The scariest fact of it all is that this information is easily accessible online without having a data breach happen. It might be weird, but it is strangely legal for websites like TruePeopleSearch to show us information from public records if someone is looking for you. It is near impossible to stop people from seeing everything you have posted online. In IT professional of 20 years Robin Olsen’s article, he shows much concern over the public nature of social networking sites. He talks about how a social media account affects more than how friends and family think of you and how a Facebook page can have more impact to employment than a resume. He is fearful of how Facebook is so wide spread and yet most users lack knowledge of the agreement that they signed up for. In his opinion one the scary part is the ‘delete’ button doesn’t actually delete the photo or the account because it will always be stored on the Facebook archives, which is clearly stated in the user agreement. These servers can and very frequently hacked and exploited by people. And millions of people trust this system without and regard to the huge risks.
Overall, think what the cutting-edge farms looked like in the early 1800’s. There would have been no mechanization. Everything was done by animals or by people. That limited the production of the farm area we did have. The production, however, were still much greater than what previous generations of people achieved if they did not have equipment to work with animal labour. Every time we improve technology, we are able to do more, in any industry, with less efforts being used. On the other hand, technologies are difficult for some poor economic groups to access because of their cost. That includes many technologies that we know to be essential to life, such as medical advances and food production. Aiding some nations with the essential vaccines or something small, like a mosquito net for the prevention of malaria, can be extremely difficult because of the costs involved. Technology has made is so that it is a profit/loss concept and people could argue that can strip us of our humanity. Do we really have the right to say who lives or dies? Do we really want to act as god?
In conclusion its completely uncertain where technology can and will take us. There is to much evidence of either side the debate. Each of us experiences both negative and positive effects of technology. And in the same way, everyone chooses what is more in his life: the advantages or disadvantages of using technology.
