"The Myth of Technology"In the 1950's, futurists predicted that the invention of labour saving machines such as the household dishwasher and robots in factories meant that the common worker would enjoy a 3 day work week. Ironically, improvements in technology have led to the disappearance of better paying, skilled work and people working harder than ever before. What is your opinion? How much does technology improve your life and the lives of people in general?
Technology is a very difficult thing to understand. We will always think that technology is improving our lifes but are we really sure of that? Most people own computers, and in reality they have made our lives easier in many ways. But in other ways they have made our lives more difficult. I feel like when I used to write on a piece of paper with a pen, I had way less distractions. Now being on a computer that has facebook, and youtube and msn makes doing homework so much more difficult. Now you have to try and be crative while also instant messaging friends, listening to music and probably talking to your friends on the phone. But that is just being a teenager and having to do homework.
In reality technology is around because we all tried to make our lives easier, but now that our lives are easier, there are less jobs, and people have to work harder to make sure that their jobs don't get replaced by some kind of computer that could do it faster.
There are some points of technology that are great, one of those would be emailing. Before emailing, you would have to talk on the phone or fax something to try and get something quickly, but more times than not, people would have to just write a letter and send it in the mail to talk to people. In what takes us 30 seconds now to write up a letter to our friends, and for them to receive it, it used to take people days to get messages that sometimes they needed. Text messaging can also be a really great asset if used correctly. Text messaging could be used for business memos or even emergency messages. They could be very effective if they were not used all the time. But because all cell phones have text messaging now, it is used as a quicker and quieter way to talk to friends and ignore your teacher. (But atleast theres not that good of a chance of your teacher catching the note on the way across the classroom)
One horrible thing that technology has done to us, is made us all spoiled. We ALWAYS want what ever is new and exciting. When computers first came out everyone wanted one, we all thought they were the best thing in the world. Now that there are laptops, we want them because the regular everyday non mobile computers that used to be amazing, are nothing to us anymore. Its the same with cell phones. Before having a cell phone was awesome in the first place, now a company can barely sell one unless it has a camera, video camera, games, and the internet on it, forget calling, people just want toys. Its the same with ipods. Any mp3 player can play the same music an ipod can, and it sounds exactly the same, but instead of buying a $30 mp3 player, we all spend the $250 to get the newest ipod, because thats the newest technology.
In conclusion, technology can be a really good thing, but in reality for the most part all it is doing is making us horribly lazy.
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