Technophilia vs. Technophobia: Where Are You on the Spectrum of Opinion - Essay Example

Today, however, it only takes a few weeks or days or hours for a new technology to make an earlier invention obsolete. Steve Jobs has just introduced the IPAD in 27 January 2010 when nine alternatives to the IPAD were introduced on the same date (The Gaea Times and Marshable.com). One of the 9 alternatives to the IPAD introduced on 27 January 2010 was Hewlett Packard’s android prototype or “Slate” (Marshable.com). New large hardisks, USBs, and computers are probably being invented by the hour.

Should we fear or love technology? In my opinion, technology is like a weapon. It can be used for good but it can also be used for evil. It is also like money. Money can be used to make oneself and his or her significant others happy but it can also be used for hallucinating drugs and make somebody worse off. Similarly, technology can make one comfortable and make others happy but technology can also make others very ill like the weapons of mass destruction or the biological weapons that can spread dangerous virus or bacteria.

Technology used to be a threat to the solidarity of a family or to the institution of the family. Developments in the factories and transport used to break up the close ties of the family but now technology can be used to bring together families, communities, and nations closer to one another through text messaging, Skype, Facebook, Yahoo messenger, and Twitter. Thus, instead of dismembering and dismantling families, communities, and nations, technology can be used instead to strengthen our social institutions.

Of course, institutions can also be redesigned or invented and technology will probably be also useful in that area. People feared technology because wrong values and pornography can be promoted in the internet. However, technology can also be used to promote the right values and the “correct” modes of behavior. All the mainstream religious organizations --- Roman Catholics, Protestants, and Islam ---- use technology to deliver their messages. All causes --- leftists, rightists, and moderate groups ---- exploit technology to sway people to their side.

Yet, people are adopting independent ideas precisely because the positions of all groups become more transparent with technology. By adjusting computer settings or protesting posts in Facebook, technology is now capable of filtering messages, pictures, and materials such that it had become feasible to control or prevent pornography. Even the social media like Facebook has settings that one can use to control what graphics and posts one can receive. Further, most likely, improvements or innovations will be introduced as breakthroughs are made in empowering users to control the information they receive, share, and accidentally leak to society.

Technology can make one more introvert as it can make one over rely on the technology for one’s social life: locking oneself in the room as one communicates through Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo or Google. However, technology also creates possibilities for invites and to be deeply involved with the lives of others as one makes posts, reacts, and interacts. Technology can also open one’s self to online games with multiple players; thus, technology can really open one’s self to interaction and socialization rather than seclusion.

Technology can make a person more inclined to see the outside world as pictures and videos are posted on nature and living in outside world of beaches, mountain sceneries, and