Introduction

Technology has always influenced people’s lives. Mass media, which are the offspring of technology, have greatly affected people’s lives and will always have an influence on man

Body

Benefits of technology

makes simple tasks easier.
helps people broaden their learning.
different method of receiving information.
different method of daily communication.

Lifestyle

In many ways, technology simplifies life.

• A more informed society, which can make quicker responses to events and trends
• Sets the stage for more complex learning tasks
• Increases multi-tasking (although this may not be simplifying)
• Global networking
• Cheaper prices
• Greater specialization in jobs

There are an extraordinary number of examples how technology has helped us that can be seen in society today. One great example is the mobile phone. Ever since the invention of the telephone society was in need of a more portable device that they could use to talk to people. This high demand for a new product led to the invention of the mobile phone ,which did, and still does, greatly influence society and the way people live their lives. Now many people are accessible to talk to whoever they want no matter where any of the two people are. All these little changes in mobile phones, like Internet access, are further examples of the cycle of co-production. Society’s need for being able to call on people and be available everywhere resulted in the research and development of mobile phones. They in turn influenced the way we live our lives. As the populace relies more and more on mobile phones, additional features were requested.

Bad effects

In other ways, technology complicates life.

• Pollution is a serious problem in a technologically advanced society (from acid rain to Chernobyl and Bhopal)
• The increase in transportation technology has brought congestion in some areas
• New forms of danger existing as a consequence of new forms of technology, such as the first generation of nuclear reactors
• New forms of entertainment, such as video games and internet access could have possible social effects on areas such as academic performance
• Increased probability of some diseases and disorders, such as obesity
• Social separation of singular human interaction. Technology has increased the need to talk to more people faster.
• Structural unemployment
• Anthropocentric climate change

Values

The implementation of technology influences the values of a society by changing expectations and realities. The implementation of technology is also influenced by values. There are (at least) three major, interrelated values that inform, and are informed by, technological innovations:

• Mechanistic world view: Viewing the universe as a collection of parts, (like a machine), that can be individually analyzed and understood (McGinn 1991). This is a form of reductionism that is rare nowadays. However, the “neo-mechanistic world view” holds that nothing in the universe cannot be understood by the human intellect. Also, while all things are greater than the sum of their parts (e.g., even if we consider nothing more than the information involved in their combination), in principle, even this excess must eventually be understood by human intelligence. That is, no divine or vital principle or essence is involved.

• Efficiency: A value, originally applied only to machines, but now applied to all aspects of society, so that each element is expected to attain a higher and higher percentage of its maximal possible performance, output, or ability. (McGinn 1991)
• Social progress: The belief that there is such a thing as social progress, and that, in the main, it is beneficent. Before the Industrial Revolution, and the subsequent explosion of technology, almost all societies believed in a cyclical theory of social movement and, indeed, of all history and the universe. This was, obviously, based on the cyclicity of the seasons, and an agricultural economy’s and society’s strong ties to that cyclicity. Since much of the world is closer to their agricultural roots, they are still much more amenable to cyclicity than progress in history.

Environment

Technology provides an understanding, and an appreciation for the world around us.

Most modern technological processes produce unwanted byproducts in addition to the desired products, which is known as industrial waste and pollution. While most material waste is re-used in the industrial process, many forms are released into the environment, with negative environmental side effects, such as pollution and lack of sustainability. Different social and political systems establish different balances between the value they place on additional goods versus the disvalues of waste products and pollution. Some technologies are designed specifically with the environment in mind, but most are designed first for economic or ergonomic effects. Historically, the value of a clean environment and more efficient productive processes has been the result of an increase in the wealth of society, because once people are able to provide for their basic needs, they are able to focus on less-tangible goods such as clean air and water.

The effects of technology on the environment are both obvious and subtle. The more obvious effects include the depletion of nonrenewable natural resources (such as petroleum, coal, ores), and the added pollution of air, water, and land. The more subtle effects include debates over long-term effects (e.g., global warming, deforestation, natural habitat destruction, coastal wetland loss.)

Each wave of technology creates a set of waste previously unknown by humans: toxic waste, radioactive waste, electronic waste.

One of the main problems is the lack of an effective way to remove these pollutants on a large scale expediently. In nature, organisms “recycle” the wastes of other organisms, for example, plants produce oxygen as a by-product of photosynthesis, oxygen-breathing organisms use oxygen to metabolize food, producing carbon dioxide as a by-product, which plants use in a process to make sugar, with oxygen as a waste in the first place. No such mechanism exists for the removal of technological wastes.

Humanity at the moment may be compared to a colony of bacteria in a Petri dish with a constant food supply: with no way to remove the wastes of their metabolism, the bacteria eventually poison themselves.

Conclusion

After considering the various aspects of modern technology, we cannot say that it is all good or bad. Man has to know how to use it for his benefit and should not abuse its use. On the overall, technology has improved man’s lives but man should not be a slave of it!

For most of us, life without these inventions is a nightmare. As the society progresses, technology is becoming more and more advanced. Most people would think that technology has made their lives easier for them and consider it as a blessing. However, from my point of view, technology has done quite the opposite. While considering technology from the usability point of view, various social and economical effects of technology need to be considered.

 Technology has made lives easier and quicker but dangerous as well. Taking in consideration some of the modern daily life inventions such as internet helping us to get information faster and allowing us to stay connected with friends and family, microwave helping us cook faster or the TV allowing us to watch a number of different channels might seem to us as making our lives easier and efficient but having a look at the other side of the minor exposes some shocking truths as well. There have been a lot of incidents where a malfunction or a technical error caused more damage than benefit. Technology creates financial problems in families because most technologies are very expensive to buy. Take the example of a television. In old times, a simple TV had two dials – a volume control and a channel changer. On the contrary, in modem times, if you need to have a TV, one always looks for something with extra add-ons and features such as a satellite receiver and a DVD player. People long for those days when they used to have a family gathering where they had a chat with each other and discussed their problems. Now-a-days, all we care about is checking our emails and text messages without the true emotional bond and relationship with each other.

Modern technology has taken away comfort from our lives and has introduced a new term “stress” in our lives. In presence of modern technology, when exactly we rest and allow our minds to turn off for a while? It has made things harder for us and distracted us. It feels like machines own the world now-a-days. It is just an artificial enhancement of human powers. Nuclear power has terrified and paralyzed its creators while machines have caused social chaos and economic stagnation. People are getting unfit, less social and more frustrated. People rely on cars and vehicles to travel small distances and hardly do any exercise which makes them more vulnerable to diseases. People spend less time developing cooking skills and thus don’t get to choose the best of food and therefore are deprived of eating healthy food. They spend the whole day isolated in front of computers and televisions wrecking their social lives.

Just think of the various poisonous gases that are ruining our environment posing a threat to human mankind as well as Mother Nature. People spend a lot of time using internet but hardly apply any of the information gained to the real world. According to a survey, a growing number of working women are suffering from burnout as a result of trying to balance work and home commitments. Seven out of ten women said that the advent of mobile phones and email only made their lives worse, leaving chaos and suffering in their lives. More than one in ten complained that having their mobile phone meant that their life was no longer their own and that having a mobile meant their employer regularly called them with out-of-hours work queries.

Kids are growing more violent and are having low academic achievements all because of their addictive games on X-boxes, Play Stations etc. The growing technology also has damaging effects in adults as well. In the business world more and more machinery and computers are taking over our jobs. This ultimately means that as technology grows, more and more jobs will be lost which might lead to a high level of unemployment.

 Advancement in medical technology is probably the only good result from the never ending advancement in technology. We have discovered new ways to light and cure diseases and save lives, but ironically we have also found new ways to kill ourselves with guns, nuclear weapons etc.

 “When the life of people is unmoral, and their relations are not based on love, but on egoism. then all technical improvements, the increase of man’s power over nature, steam, electricity, the telegraph, every machine, gunpowder, and dynamite, produce the impression of dangerous toys placed in the hands of children”.

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November 5th, 9:47oun

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 - A computer is a device that accepts information (in the form ofdigitalized data) and manipulates it for some result based on a program or sequence of instructions on how the data is to be processed. Complex computers also include the means for storing data (including the program, which is also a form of data) for some necessary duration. A program may be invariable and built into the computer (and called logic circuitry as it is onmicroprocessors) or different programs may be provided to the computer (loaded into its storage and then started by an administrator or user). Today’s computers have both kinds of programming.

Most histories of the modern computer begin with the Analytical Engineenvisioned by Charles Babbagefollowing the mathematical ideas of George Boole, the mathematician who first stated the principles of logic inherent in today’s digital computer. Babbage’s assistant and collaborator, Ada Lovelace, is said to have introduced the ideas of program loops and subroutines and is sometimes considered the first programmer. Apart from mechanical calculators, the first really useable computers began with the vacuum tube, accelerated with the invention of the transistor, which then became embedded in large numbers in integrated circuits, ultimately making possible the relatively low-cost personal computer.

Modern computers inherently follow the ideas of the stored program laid out byJohn von Neumann in 1945. Essentially, the program is read by the computer one instruction at a time, an operation is performed, and the computer then reads in the next instruction, and so on. Recently, computers and programs have been devised that allow multiple programs (and computers) to work on the same problem at the same time in parallel. With the advent of the Internet and higher bandwidth data transmission, programs and data that are part of the same overall project can be distributed over a network and embody the Sun Microsystems slogan: "The network is the computer."

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