Period 4 Essays

ONE

Technology: Controlled or not?

We all think that technology is necessary to survive, and to an extent it is, however what most people don’t realize is that we are in complete control of it and will always be in control of it. Technology makes our lives better in general by speeding up boring or dangerous tasks, by making things more efficient so we have more free time, and that’s its purpose. However, while we advance with more technology we should not forget the things that allowed us to advance, and remember that what we make a year from now isn’t guaranteed to be better then what we had before.

Humans living right now need technology for many different reasons. We use it to make new medicines to keep ourselves alive, transportation to go to the places we need to go to, to get the things like food necessary for survival, and much more. The inventions we make do not necessarily make us better or worse, we just change and adapt to the times and along with it, change our perception of things like humanity. A vast majority of it we could live without. Things like cell phones, calculators, television are not necessary to live like some things, but we would not be as happy as before if we suddenly lacked it, but we would eventually learn to adapt.

In certain ways, all of this technology has slowed down the human race. Before things like cars, planes, and other major inventions, humans would use physical labor to do most of their tasks in everyday life. This would mean that the naturally strong and the healthy would have a big advantage over the ones who were not as strong or fit. Nowadays, we have cranes that can move heavy boxes, and planes that carry us places our legs never could. However this is a big improvement because it allows more humans to live their live to the fullest which means the survival of humanity in the long run.

Humans when left in an environment will naturally make technology to take advantage of where they are at. They use and take control of it when they are young because that’s what they are used to, the things when they were young. As more people come into society and make new things, they are afraid of seeing the old ways go away because they are no longer in control. This doesn’t mean all new technology is always better, some can be worse such as more efficient methods of killing, which most people don’t like but is apart of human nature. It would be very hard to rid ourselves of this technology because humans like control and power, and when we have technology that’s what we have: control and power. Even if we were set back to the middle ages with all their innovations back then, we would still eventually resort to our old ways and make things more advanced.

Humans create technology because they like control. This is why we will never be controlled by our technology, because it’s the one thing we can be assured in that will not overpower us. It can be faster, stronger, more efficient, and do many things, but it will never be able to out think us, or do things that our own brain can do far more quickly. If we embrace it the new will develop naturally and progress for the better usually, and our perception will change to the point where all of it is acceptable for society no matter what we consider bad right now. The one thing about technology is that we adapt to it even though we think it adapts to us. It can change the way we think quicker then we change the way it thinks because it has no thought, its technology and nothing more.

TWO

Technology, who’s in control?

In the early advancements of technology, it was seen as just a little helper for the things in which normal people did. The first things created were basic things such as just improvements of the earlier necessities. The light bulb was the replacement of the candlelit light sources, the car replacing the horse, the oven replacing the open fire and so on. But the later advancements to, at fist, heighten our strength. They were tools that we could use to quicken the job at hand. But the further we advanced the more we mad it so that strength was inferior.

Technology took on a new role, from bettering strength to a focus on teaching and mental development. With the development of the computer, in 1952, people started to realize that technology could be used for a wider range to things. Video games, the World Wide Web, and other advancements started to gradually develop into our lives. Technology became a house held thing that everyone had. The need for laborers became less and less as it could be less costly and more quickly done with technology. This made the athletic people or people who were only good at things requiring strength inferior. The old saying that “only the strong survive” became a false statement as the world now made to be that “only the smart survive” in life.

So with the furthest developments of technology we start to lose control in a failed attempt to control all. Everything has become linked together, all computers are linked via the Internet and many other electronics are linked to the Internet. So if one could control the Internet, in theory, one could control the world. The other way to see it is that technology has gotten to the point of total control. Technology has gotten to a point of total control where the government watches our every move and hears what we say all the time, and we can’t even get rid f information even though we think we do. There are security cameras everywhere, like when we go driving, when we walk on the streets or even when we go buy groceries.

In the book the muse and the machine, the author goes in and says how the we are in the development of a human mind. This meaning that we are trying to create a computer that is so highly advanced, that it matches that of our own mind. This being said we are in the development of creating ourselves inferior. If we were to have a computer that was as smart as we are than we would do un to ourselves as we did on to the candlelit light, create ourselves inferior.

In the book, Interface Culture, it talks about how people continue to use technology that degrades or downgrades their penmanship and etiquette on how things are done or how to do certain things. Technology is helping to control us now since we are making bigger and better technology advancements that will further delve into a regular citizen’s privacy as where they live, who they talk to on the phone regularly, what they buy , and the patterns of what they do in their everyday lives.

Technology is helping the government become Big Brother like in the book 1984 by George Orwell, it most likely won’t become that deep as it was in 1984 the book, but it could possibly happen within the next 200 years , but the technology will be so overwhelming that it would most likely take a lot of manpower.

THREE

Is technology out of control and about to rule us?

Technology can be useful in many ways. It has been used for years for purposes like communication, transportation, food production, medical purposes, entertainment, and so on. Each book we read discussed technology; for example, in “Hal’s Legacy” they discussed thinking computers, in “The Muse in the Machine” they discussed the possibility of using computers to improve ourselves, in “Machine Beauty” they discussed technology’s money-making potential, and in “Kinds of Minds” they discussed how technology aids in the learning and thinking process.

There are many people in the world who worry about the extent of tecnology’s influence in today’s society. Generally speaking, older people tend to be more conservative toward technology, while younger people are more liberal where technology is concerned. A likely reason for this is that older people have lived long enough to see how technology has negatively effected people’s mental ability and assume that the problems will only get worse faster as time goes on; whereas younger people think themselves invulnerable to any failing or loss of thinking power. For example, it used to be that students had to do all calculations on a combination of mind and pencil/paper and were proficient in doing calculations quickly in this manner, but, since the calculator has come into widespread use the students have become decreasingly able to solve equations without them. An opponent of technology would insist that this is a completely negative situation and should be corrected by ridding the world of calculators; on the other hand, a proponent of technology would assert that this is a positive situation, because by using calculators the students are able to solve more difficult equations faster, which results in being better overall. We propose that, instead of being wholly negative or wholly positive, technology is positive inasmuch as it is used wisely; for example, in the calculator problem, the best situation would be a situation wherein the students continue to be proficient in paper-pencil-and-brain calculations but are also able to turn to a calculator in order to produce the answer more quickly. This, however, does not appear to be the case. It appears that in the current state of the world, technology is not under control, but is being used without thought to what we may be losing, and in order to create an ideal situation, reliance on technology should be balanced with the ability to do the things we rely on technology for.

Some people take the earlier worry a step further, and begin to question whether control remains in the hands of humans or if technology has or soon will usurp it. We think that, while control remains in the hands of people for the time being, the present trends of putting more and more reliance on the shoulders of technology will eventually lead to technology’s rule over human beings. For example, the supercomputer “HAL” from the book “Hal’s Legacy” is a clear example of what could happen if we rely on technology to make decisions for us: almost the entire crew of the mission to Jupiter was killed because HAL decided that they would endanger the mission.

FOUR

Out of Control

Technology is the relationship that society has with its tools and crafts. Technology can be defined as the entities, both material and immaterial. Technology can also be used to refer to a collection of techniques. In many societies, technology has helped develop more advanced economies. Technology is not always good it has affected society and its surroundings in a number of ways.

Simple forms of technology are the best to us because they’re not too high tech, and they’re easy to understand. Technology helps us contact others, find cures, get around by means of transportation, understand science, etc. These items are very efficient to us because they help us better our lives and is time saving. Technology is helpful to get us through in life, but it depends on how you use it, if you’re smart and careful when using it.

More advanced technology is when things start to get bad, because some people don’t know how to use it and aren’t smart when it comes to using it. Some forms of technology aren’t necessary to have they just waste time and money. Technology has gone too far now a days and it is making our society lazy and dependent, not able to think for ourselves. If more advanced technology is being made than that’s not good because no one is going to be able to do anything for themselves, it’s going to make us dumber as a society, especially in the United States where you find many efficient technological advances. We’re going to start expecting technology to do everything for us.

A good type of technology that we came up with for example is transportation. Cars provide us with a fast efficient way to get around. Planes also help us get around without the difficulties of having to resort to old fashion ways like camels, mules, wagons. We started to downfall as we progressed into making fancy technological cars like the Lamborghini, compared to a Honda. They both perform the same task but we would rather spend more money on a more technological car. Another good example is the phone, a house phone is a very good technological advancement, because it provides us with a way to contact each other without having to go through great difficulties. The downfall from a house phone is the cellular phone, because the cellular phone now side tracks us from work that needs to get done and puts all our efforts into talking 24/7.

Although we’ve been talking about the positives and negatives of technology and all of its advances, we understand that technology can be good to an extent. But we as society have made technology these days out of control, and we still expect more with our expectations so high. But if it wasn’t for the technology that we have today we wouldn’t be as set apart as the people of our earlier generations.

Some people say that they fear technology. They think that the growth of technology will take over our planet. Or that technology is going to take over most of our jobs, in the workforce, and make us lazier. Sometimes technology breaks or something will go wrong with it, people that fear technology think that if they do things themselves rather then use technology these things won’t happen. Technology in the future is only going to get more advanced, that can’t be a good thing.