Gimpel the Fool Essay

Technology essay – Advantages and disadvantages of technological advances Technology has been progressing at an astonishingly rapid rhythm, and it has been changing our lives in a scaring way. In the future, our lives might change even more, with several benefits and dangers of technological advances. Everything evolves around 3 concepts: technology, science and future. So now arises the question: will this technology advance make society better or worse off? On the one hand, several benefits will make society better off. For example, advances in cosmetic surgery will lead to people being highly satisfied with their personal appearance and happiness among society will be increased. For example, people that feel ugly and can’t find a couple will now be able do it with facial metamorphosis, and they won’t be depressed anymore. In conclusion, society’s welfare and happiness will be increased by cosmetic surgery. Another example is genetically modified food. The ability to modify the food’s gens will allow crops to grow faster. This will lead to higher amounts of food being produced at lower prices. As a consequence, world’s hunger rates will be dramatically reduced, with higher nutrition rates taking place. In conclusion, genetically modified food will affect positively human hunger and nutrition rates. Lastly, human lives will also be benefited by another important technological advancement: animal clonation. Species extinction will be reduced or even stopped, as well as hunger rates to the increase in supply of food. To sum up, animal clonation will solve some of the key issues which are actually part of the world’s daily agenda. Overall, human life will be changed in a very positive way by advancements such as the mentioned before and some actual key issues won’t exist anymore. However, technology might also bring severe dangers to human life, being society’s welfare not maximized and in a very extreme case, humans might be extinct. An example of this situation is life expectancy increased to 120/130 years old. Besides this might be seen as a positive fact because we will be able to have a higher quality and longer life, increasing the life expectancy to that range of years will make more profound an actual worldwide issue: overpopulation. If humans start living until 120/130 years old and the birth rates remain constant, then overpopulation will take place, global warming will increase at a higher rate and human life will be seriously threated. In conclusion, increase life expectancy might be a danger to human life if it’s not applied properly. Another example, which is less â€Å"catastrophic† than the previous one mentioned is online education. If we look at a â€Å"hardware and internet connection timeline†, we will be able to notice that internet connection has been doubling its speed every 5 years, and hardware per capita (ie: the amount of computer/s owned by each person all over the world† has been increasing at a constant rate of 25%. This is a good fact, which also implies that online education will take place in the short term future. But isn’t this good? Research have shown that if online education would take place, students would suffer the syndrome of social isolation, which means that mental disorders would be suffered by students as a consequence of a lack of social interaction, as well as decreased happiness and welfare in society due to the unsocial students. In conclusion, besides it might increase individual productivity as students can adopt their own working patterns and practices, it represents a big problem to society. To finish off, another example is technological advancements in internet resulting in a loss of privacy. This is because there will be higher software’s available to spy other people and get into their private life, as well as the fact that the increased availability of internet in society would make all of us more interrelated. As an example, software’s will be available to steal our Facebook account or any other social network password, or if any photo is uploaded to Facebook then people might be able to see it without the publisher of the photo even knowing. In conclusion, it might be considered as a minor issue in society, but as internet and globalization has been having a remarkable growth, this danger will be more noticeable in the long term and will definitely need to be treated. In conclusion, technological advancements are always seen as a good thing but however, they might represent a real danger to society, even threatening human life to extinction. This is not because of the nature of the technological advancements, but because of its over use or misuse by society, and all the dangers these advancements generate could be easily reduced or removed with government intervention and a market that would automatically stop or reduce its consumption because it brings dangers among its consumers.