Technology has helped mankind to improve life quality on the planet, has prolonged our life by providing cure to many diseases, helped us to move faster and save time, to better communicate between us, etc.
What is Technology?
Technology can be described today as a collection of skills, techniques, methods, and processes that are used in the manufacturing process of goods or services or to reach different objectives, such as scientific investigation and discovery.
At the same time, technology created air, water and soil pollution, helped us to build weapons of mass destruction, has increased our dependency on different devices making us to forget that we feel better outside in nature instead of sitting in the house in front of the TV or the computer, and many other things that could be useful or not useful for us.
Mankind is evolving today faster than before, mostly due to the fact technology is growing much faster, and this could lead our civilization to a future where technology can control our society because is more evolved than us.
This would be the reason why we can consider technology today as something beneficial for mankind, but also as a menace that could someday end our life here on the planet.
Pros of Technology
Technology has many advantages today because it helped our civilization to evolve to a new level, to become more social and it could help us to better understand our role here on the planet and in the universe.
1. Gives us access to free information
Today we have access to wide variety of information (knowledge and news) around the world by simply using our phone or a computer connected to the internet.
The internet itself is a free service that gives us access to free information about almost everything.
Using the information available online or the information provided by other sources such as newspapers, magazines and the TV, we can bring our knowledge to a new level and we can also improve the quality of our life here on the planet.
2. Makes us very mobile and friendlier with the environment
Nowadays, we can travel around the world in only a couple of days.
Using electric cars we can visit places in only a couple of hours, even if we talk about distances of hundreds of miles, but without polluting the environment.
If we use an airplane, we can travel from one continent to another in only a couple of hours, and around the world in just three to four days, which means that thanks to technology, mankind is now more mobile than ever.
The further development of the technology will reduce the time spent traveling from one place to another even more by increasing the traveling speed and improving the safety of the trip.
Of course that there could be political challenges to travel to certain places on the planet, but time will solve these issues too, and will make the entire planet way more accessible than is today to all of us.
3. Helps us to save precious time
Because technology allows us to travel today way faster from one place to another without using our legs, we save precious time every day.
Our time here on the planet is limited, and by using technology to travel faster we are saving time for other useful activities that are beneficial for us and the people that we interact with.
A few centuries ago when technology was not available, and mankind relied only on its legs or on animal power (donkeys, horses, camels, elephants, etc.) to travel from one place to another, and the long or the medium trips consumed days, weeks, months or even years instead of minutes, hours or days (like today), and people spent most of their lives traveling (some of them even died during the long trips).
There were also people that never left their birth place during their entire life just because traveling was hard and also dangerous without the presence of technology.
Thanks to technology we can do today other activities while traveling fast from one place to another such as working, talking with other people, reading, watching the TV or online shows, news, etc.
4. Makes things more affordable
Competition lowers the prices, and from this thing will always benefit the end user.
Because technology evolves at a very fast rate today, we see new products launched on the market almost every day.
A new phone receives an update after only a couple of months after the first release, or we see even a new and improved model that replaces the previous one.
When this happens, the price of the previous model drops extremely fast and makes it way more affordable than it was a couple of months ago (even if its bought as new).
This is the reason why many consumers are not buying the latest smartphone or even a new car right after release because they know that in only a couple of months for the phone or in two or three years for the car, the smartphone will be available at a lower price, and the car will lose at least 50% of its initial price.
All these things are possible today thanks to technology that evolves very fast and brings on the market new and improved products every year.
5. Helps us to better communicate
The invention of the telegraph (between 1830 and 1840) was the first form of technology used by mankind to communicate on long distances.
After that we had the telephone lines, followed by cell phones and today smartphones that are using satellites locate in space above the planet to communicate, navigate and do many other things much easier and faster than before.
When the first cell phone appeared on the market (the first handheld mobile phone was created by Motorola on April 3, 1973), mankind has suddenly become way more mobile than before, because the new phone was able to ensure our communication with the others when we were away from home.
Today, we can communicate with ease from one part of the world to the other by simply using our phone connected to a mobile network, or we can communicate for free using the internet.
In less than a century, mankind evolved from letters to smartphones, which are also connecting us with a large number of people using the social media platforms available online.
6. Helps us to better manage our finances
Today we are not keeping our savings at home in cash, we are using one or multiple bank accounts to keep our money and to make payments.
Using technology we are buying things online, we are using a credit card to make payments in the store instead of paying with cash, we are investing our money to make profits, and we can do all these things because technology allows us to use virtual money (that have coverage in real money).
Technology allows us to use our money almost everywhere on the planet by simply using a credit card connected with our home bank account.
7. Inspires us to be more creative
Technology showed us what we can do and achieve using it, and this is inspiring for us to create new technology that can be used to improve our everyday lives even more.
Only technology can bring our knowledge to a new level that can help us live healthier lives on the planet.
Technology can produce clean energy, can clear the air that we breathe, can help us to heal all the diseases affecting our civilization, to create advanced materials with improved properties, can bring us together, and can help us to visit the planets in the solar system and in a couple of decades even the nearby stars, which would open our knowledge to a cosmic level.
8. Thanks to technology, learning is now much easier
We are no longer relying only on the books to keep all the knowledge of our civilization for the future generations.
Thanks to technology, the knowledge is today available online and can be accessed from everywhere by simply using our phone, a tablet, laptop, desktop PC, etc.
Using Google or another search engine, we can find information about almost everything today, so we no longer need to keep books for this.
Youtube is another great and free platform available online where different people are showing their skills to do useful things, and we can learn from these videos how to do simple tasks without hiring a team of workers (which could exceed our budget).
9. Technology is helping us to become free
In the last decade, technology has evolved a lot, and today, we are starting to understand that using technology we can produce our own food, water and energy.
Water is available underground, we only need to use technology to access it, and bring it to the surface.
Technology can also help us to make the water drinkable.
If we have a piece of land, we can produce our own food (or at least a part of it).
Energy is available for all of us due to the presence of the Sun and the wind on our planet.
Clean technology can be used to turn the sunlight or the kinetic energy of the wind into clean electricity for free to power our house.
Technology allows us to live freely without relying on a utility company (for energy or other utilities) and by using the natural resources available on the planet.
10. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is an advanced form of technology
Mankind created artificial intelligence (AI) to automate different manufacturing processes in the industry sector and also to manage different tasks better than the humans.
On the internet, the AI works better than an employee because it works 24/7 without a break, does not require a monthly wage, doesn’t get sick, will never steal, etc.
AI is the perfect worker for many virtual or real life tasks.
11. Technology will change our planet and will help us to move to other planets
In the First Industrial Revolution (between 1760 and about 1840), technology helped mankind to make the transition to new manufacturing processes (from hand production methods to mechanical production using machines).
During the Second Industrial Revolution (known as the Technological Revolution), a rapid industrialization process started (between 1870 and 1914).
Technology produced the industry revolution that later created the society of today, which is capable of changing entire areas of land (a desert area in United Arab Emirates is turned today into land using Liquid Nanoclay technology, which mixes nano-particles of clay with water and binds them to sand particles to condition the soil of the desert).
In a couple of years from now on, mankind using technology will be able to turn entire areas of desert into arable land (a very useful natural resource for the growing population of the planet), and in a few decades, technology will be able to terraform other planets in the Solar System and create new places in the universe where mankind can move.
Cons of Technology
There are several disadvantages related to technology, mostly because it makes us weaker due to the disconnection from nature, and let’s not forget the fact that evolving continuously, technology can reach a point in the future (the singularity) when the AI can consider that mankind is useless and needs to be destroyed.
1. Makes us physically weak
Using technology to move on long distances in a short time means that we are no longer using our legs for walking or running because we are using a device that requires a small effort from us, or has its own engine and helps us to move faster.
Using the car everyday makes our bones and muscles weaker.
Technology is also very interesting and keeps ourselves in front of the TV or the in front of the computer instead of staying outside in nature to do different physical activities and interact with other people.
2. Can create dependencies
We are very dependent on technology today just because almost everything around us is technology or something related to it.
To understand how dependent we are on our gadgets or even on the appliances installed at home, just wait for a day when a blackout occurs.
If the problem is not solved in a couple of minutes and takes hours, you will feel yourself very confused because nothing works inside the house without electricity and everything you want to do you can do it by yourself and without using the appliances or any electric tool.
If your phone is dead and you can’t charge it because there is no electricity in the house you will feel confused again, not knowing what to do with your hands, and how to contact other people because you will suddenly feel that you want to talk with others about the blackout, or at least to call at the utility company to fix the problem.
Our entire society would be paralyzed if a massive blackout occurs, or if the current services would suddenly become unavailable.
3. Can disconnect us from the people close to us
We see every day people checking their phones at home, at the working place, on the streets, etc.
Social media platforms can be accessed using a simple phone and can connect us with a very large number of people.
At the same time, because we spend a lot of time on the phone (usually to check the news or what others are doing) we forget about the people next to us.
This way we start neglecting our family, and this thing creates a gap between people living under the same roof.
This distance created by technology between people forming a couple can break a family and can lead to divorce, which will affect all the members of the family, and especially the children.
4. May affect our individual freedoms
The presence of technology can enhance the power of the people that have no respect for our individual freedoms or our lives.
Technology can be used to watch us (without our will), and also can be used to control us.
Knowing all our preferences in terms of news, shows, buying intent, what places are we visiting, etc., technology can serve us suitable products, but can also control us with ease.
5. Technology used to save data is not 100% secure
We are no longer keeping memories (photos and movies) and data in books and photos, we are keeping them in our PC, phone or even in the cloud (cloud storage).
If technology fails, all our data saved using these devices can be lost because we haven’t kept the information on something that we can control.
A book or notebook can also fail in time or due to our negligence, and technology can fail, but can give us the opportunity to save our data in multiple places to increase the change of keeping them safe for a very long time.
6. We don’t fully understand yet how technology works
I already mentioned that technology evolves much faster than we do, and this will create a major gap between the knowledge capability of the average people about technology.
Only a few people are involved in AI development and advanced robotics today, and because this technology evolves very fast, the average people (which are very numerous on the planet) will have a hard time understanding the progress, not only in this sector, but in many other sectors involving advanced technology.
In time, the difference between people understanding advanced technology and the others that don’t understand much about it will become even deeper.
Technology (the AI) can evolve up to a level where even its creators will have a hard time understanding what happens to it, and that moment could be very dangerous for us.
7. Technology has been used to create weapons of mass destruction
When technology was or is used to build weapons of mass destruction, our individual freedoms no longer count because the national security is more important.
Any weapon ever created is a piece of technology produced with the purpose of protection or as a useful tool, but it was actually used to kill (animals and people).
8. Technology can help us to do bad things
Even if we copy the work of others (copy/paste) or we use technology to produce fake news and manipulate information, technology can help us in many ways to do bad things that will affect other people.
It is very important to understand that technology is a powerful tool in our hands and this is the reason why we need to use it wisely.
9. Technology can destroy our civilization
Technology consists today in a large number of machines involved in our every day lives to help us to things easier and on a mass scale.
Technology can put an end to our civilization, image source: pixabay.com
At the same time, we are using artificial intelligence (AI) in some of the devices used to assist us in our work, when we travel, when we are at home, etc.
If we work today to make the AI much smarter, much faster, and way more powerful than we are, some day, this AI could suddenly turn from our useful assistant to our enemy that can destroy us easily because is smarter, faster and more powerful than we are.
Final conclusion
Mankind created technology to help us evolve, so we don’t need to make technology smarter than we are because there is no competition between us.
Technology needs to remain the useful thing or process that helps us achieve our goals and ease our life.
While robots are not yet capable of duplicating themselves or to create other robots, people are responsible for the technology created and used.
People and machines can work together very well, and we the people, will always be the ones that are more sensitive, more emphatic and more creative compared to the AI inside the robots.
