Technology in our everyday life - Essay Example

Your Full Your s 25 March Reflection Essay I believe that living in the modern times seems like livingin a science fiction film. Stupendous achievements and remarkable breakthroughs which were considered impossible have been made, with wilder, more extravagant feats envisaged in the very near future. If someone from the last century, or even the fifties, were to be picked up and dropped smack in the middle of any modern city today, they would surely feel what a science fiction film viewer would, albeit a higher degree of shock.

I think life today has become a hodge-podge of gadgetry and mad science. We use something fantastically gimmicky for nearly everything we do: we swipe our fingers over sleek slabs of glass and aluminum to communicate with each other; we laugh or smile or cry while we stare at luminous surfaces of yet more slates of cool metal; and, we gain access into buildings by speaking magic words into the air. This is exactly what it would seem like to someone who had never come across a touch-screen phone, a personal computing tablet or modern-day voice recognition technology.

It is often seen that one type of technology, out of a freak chance, may behave erratically in the presence of other appliances. I would quote the example of mobile phone interference. Mobile communication technology, while one of the greatest breakthroughs of science is considered dangerous and hence prohibited for use on aircraft or in gas stations! The mobile signals responsible for carrying voice and data may interfere with an aircraft’s sensitive navigational equipment and can cause a spark enough to ignite gasoline fumes.

Furthermore, they must not be brought into close proximity with pacemakers and medical equipment. Technology therefore, is selective in its coexistence preferences, it may be said. Technology may promise to help mankind in some spheres but severely limits, and even proves damaging in others, I feel. Mostly, machines and materials created for one purpose end up doing something altogether different: microwave ovens were developed during WWII to keep ammunition warm and available at short notice where as the initial use of gunpowder in ancient China was to make fireworks.

There are an equal, sometimes a greater number of abuses of technology, as there are uses. Consequences of using a particular type of technology or its abuse cannot be envisioned at the time of its invention or discovery, as Nye points out in Technology Matters: Questions to Live with. Even with drugs, what is hailed today as the next ‘miracle of science’ may be cursed tomorrow for the truckload of side-effects and unwanted extras it unloads on its users. Side effects of technology take us a while to discover.

And by that time, we are so used to that particular technology that we try to invent new ways to counter the side-effects, rather than abolish the offensive tech once and for all. We hope to eventually stumble upon a lesser evil after a fruitless – and usually obscenely expensive – pursuit for the ideal solution. We devise a fix to sort out problems created by another fix and so on. The onslaught of fix after fix, breakthrough after breakthrough and problem after problem makes me wonder if technology will eventually be humankind’s undoing.

Works Cited Lohr, Steve. “Computers That See You and Keep Watch Over You.” The New York Times. The New York Times Company, 1 Jan. 2011. Web. 25 Mar. 2011. Nye, David E. Technology Matters: Questions to Live with. Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2006. Print. “Victor Wouk and the Great Hybrid Car Cover-up of 1974.” Hybrid Cars: Auto Alternatives for the 21st Century. Hybrid Cars, 27 Mar. 2006. Web. 25 Mar. 2011 Whitehead, Tom. “ Warning of New Era of Surveillance State.

” The Telegraph. Telegraph Media Group Limited, 12 Nov. 2010. Web. 25 Mar. 2011.