Has Technology Made Life Easier or Harder - Essay Example

of the English: How Technology has Made Life Easier to Various Members of the Society Advantages of Technology to a Business Executive Technology has evolved in the recent past to not only make individuals but also enterprises to have a competitive edge. Technology has been associated with reduced time and finances invested in accomplishment of tasks. This necessitates the need to evaluate the role that technology has played in transforming the lives of individuals and businesses (Arif and Maryam 653-66). This paper will be committed to outlining how technology has made life easier from the perspective of a business executive, stay at home parent, and a high school student. To begin with, technology has made the life of a business executive easier through innovation. For a company to have a competitive edge in business, it has to be innovative. Necessity is the driving force for every organization since every business executive wants his business to be among the best. Technology has enhanced innovation since it provides business executives with a wide range of information that they can use to invent an idea. Innovation is a symbol of growth that pulls customers toward an organization and gratitude to technology; this has become easy for most business executives. It is through efficient innovation streaming from technology that business executives are able to maintain a competitive edge for their organizations (Business Technology Office 1-6). Additionally, technology has made the life of a business executive easier through effective marketing. Marketing is a business strategy used by an organization to make the consumers aware of its products and services. It is through marketing that consumers become aware of an organizations existence and become interested in its services. It is important that a business executive invests time and finances to upgrade its advertising strategies. Technology has made the marketing strategies of a business executive easier since an organization can subscribe online to a marketing agency. In addition, the business executive can open a blog site where he can post articles with key words and upon search by the consumers; they can access the organization products. Technology has made it cheaper to market since all a business executive need is access to the internet and a computer to use to post his articles. It is indeed evident that technology has made the marketing life of a business executive easier (Business Technology Office 1-6). Technology has also made the life of a business executive easier through quick access to information. Knowledge is essential to a business executive since one has to keep abreast with recent information. Technology has made this possible enabling a business executive to have fast access to information via technological devices. This information is essential in planning and in implementing strategies to give the business executive a competitive edge. Information accessed through technological devices is credible and up to date and is from scholars who might not be accessed in local libraries. Easy access to credible relevant information with the help of technology has made the life of a business executive easier (Business Technology Office 1-6). Moreover, technology has made the life of a business executive easier by giving him higher revenues at minimum cost. This is achieved in a variety of diverse ways. To begin with, technology has made communication for the business executive cheaper, cutting on communication cost. Prior to technology the business executive had to either go personally to his business colleagues or send letters that may delay in arrival. With technology, the business executive just sends an electronic mail that is delivered immediately and urgent meetings can be convened with no difficulty. This reduction in communication costs translates to higher revenues since the business executive will in turn invest the saved cost in his business. The increased revenues which is the main goal as to why a business executive is in business reveals that technology has made the life of a business executive cheaper (Business Technology Office 1-6). From a different perspective, technology has made the life of a business executive easier through automation. Prior to the invention of technology, majority of business executives used to employ staff that to perform activities that can now be performed by the use of technologically enhanced devices. An automation that has made the life of business executives easier is the automation of storage facilities. Before, a business executive needed to have a warehouse or store where he could store his paper work. Currently with the invention of technology, there are soft ware’s in which the business executive can store this information making the retrieval fast. Also technologically advanced software like quick books can be used for bookkeeping. Sale force software can also be used for sales rather than hiring sales people. Automation of storage has indeed made the life of a business executive easier (Business Technology Office 1-6). In other aspects, technology has made the life of a business executive easier in reference to procurement of staff. In case where a business executive encounters massive turnover of staff, immediate procurement of staff is needed to prevent the collapse of the organization. In scenarios where technology was not present, this could take ages increasing the costs incurred by the business executive. With technologically enhanced devices like face book, yahoo, twitter, and Gmail, the business executive is able to inform prospective employees through their social sites. Moreover, the employees are in a position to send their resumes online and just await a confirmation to attend an interview. Procurement has become an easy endeavor for business executives’ appreciation to technology (Business Technology Office 1-6). Subsequently, technology has made the life of a business executive easier by enhancing his investment opportunities. Technology enables business executives to know the market prices of commodities in the market. For business executives willing to invest, technology makes their investment process easier. Before the invention of technology, business executives had to engage many brokers and financial advisers who would do speculations and advise the business executives on the most viable investments. With the invention of technology, business executives view the trend of prices and profits of enterprises they want to invest in and made choices on whether to invest. Investment has become a cheap and fast process for business executives following technology advancement (Business Technology Office 1-6). Advantages to a Stay-at-Home Parent Technology has made the life of a stay at home parent easier since the parent can work from home. Prior to technology, when a parent had a sick or had just delivered, she had to take leave from work and stay at home to nurture her child. Technology gives the stay at home parent an opportunity to continue working while still at home. A parent with a personal computer and internet can continue working while at home. Using her phone, she can postpone meetings or can send her proxy to represent her in the meetings. This enables the parent to give attention to her ailing child and to her job. Instead of taking leave or having her child hospitalized, a stay at home with access to technology is able to do both. This evidences that indeed technology has made the life of a stay at home parent easier (Hogan 25-7). Technology has made the life of a stay at home parent easier since it enables the parent to keep abreast with latest information and provides an easy avenue to return to work. A significant proportion of stay at home parents result from retrenchment or resigning from their previous jobs. At home, technology enables these parents to be updated on new job ventures. Technology saves them from the hurdles of walking from office to office looking for a job. At the comfort of their home, they are able to apply for other jobs and hence make the search for a job more efficient. For a stay at home parent looking for a job, technology indeed makes his life easier (Hogan 25-7). Subsequently, technology makes the life of a stay at home easier since the parent is able to monitor the sites visited by the children. Technology has no limit and when children use it, there is no limit to what they will access. A stay at home is in a position to overcome this limitation of technology. In a scenario where everyone utilizes the personal computer and internet, a stay at home parent is able to monitor the sites visited by the children. It also gives the stay at home parent an avenue to set passwords or block some sites so that the children cannot access the. This makes the life of the stay at home parent easier since the parent does not get worried if the children spend too much time in the internet (Macgill 1-10). Technology has also made the life of a stay at home parent easier in keeping contact with his or her social group. In situations whereby a parent has to stay at home secondary to illness, technology enables the stay at home parent to continue communicating with her colleagues. This is a cost effective method of keeping in touch. Rather than her colleagues travelling all the way to her home every day, with just a call, they are able to communicate with each other. Technology therefore makes life easier for a stay at home parent by enhancing communication with the outside world (Hogan 25-7). Technology also makes the life of a stay at home parent easier in case of emergencies. Prior to invention, a stay at home parent would find it hard and inconveniencing reporting emergencies. In a scenario where a stay at home parent is taking care of a terminally ill child, the parent needs to keep communicating with the doctor in case the condition of the child deteriorates. Thanks to technology, phones are currently present where the stay at home parent can call the doctor and be advised on what to be doing before the doctor arrives. Consequently, life is made easier as the stay at home parent can call the emergency department, first aid department and aid in saving life that could have otherwise be lost if there was no the technological device like the phone (Macgill 1-11). As pertains to a high school student, technology has made life easier by making communications with the management more efficient. This is since technology has enabled the students to be able to pay for their admission fees online without necessarily having to travel to their institutions to do it. Consequently, this communication has been made more efficient since the students are able to access their records, their grades, and the current activities concerning them. This has made life easier for the high school students since they do not have to always travel to their institutions when they need information, they can just access it via the internet gratitude to technology. This has also made the transfer from faculties, from institutions more efficient for the high school students as all their personal information can be accessed online (Arif and Maryam 653-66). Advantages of Technology to Students Technology among high school students has made their life easier in comprehending what their tutors teach. This is since it is through technology that visual images like power point are available. This makes it possible for students to comprehend ideas more easily. An example is a lecture on how the heart pumps blood. By the tutor just giving a lecture with no aid of a technologically enhanced device, it is difficult for a student to comprehend this. However, if the heart is stipulated technologically via a chart that is enhanced, it becomes easy for the student to understand. Moreover, this creates an image in the minds of the students that they are not easy to forget. Instead of struggling to understand concepts, technology indeed makes the life of a high school student easier (Arif and Maryam 653-66). Subsequently, technology has also made life easier for the high school students by enabling them to multi task. Technology has transformed majority of the high school students to digital natives. They are hence able to accomplish more than one task at a go. With their laptops, they are in a position to do their assignments at the same time from their iPods they are able to chat with their friends. This multi-tasking among the high school students because of technology has made them more innovative as through the internet, they discover diverse ways of performing activities. This multi-tasking is of benefit to them since it reduces the time that they would have engaged in risky behavior like drugs, theft, and mischief due to being idle (Arif and Maryam 653-66). The learning experience of a high school student has been made easier by the use of technology. This is evident through a study conducted among high school students on the impact that technology had on their learning experiences. Majority commented that learning was easier when technology was used, as they did not have to take down many notes during the lecture. In conjunction, other students voiced that technology made them feel involved in the learning process. This made their learning life easier since they concentrated more as they felt that the tutor had their interest at heart as he constantly involved them (Lavin, Leon, and Thomas 1-13). Moreover, the life of a high school student has been made easier as stipulated in the study foretold. Majority of the students commented that they felt more motivated to attend lessons in which their tutors used technology. This made it easier for them to achieve high grades in these units, as they did not easily forget what was taught by use of technology, an example being the tutors who used power point presentations in their lectures. Consequently, these students avowed that technology made their life easier as in sessions they did not understand; they were in a position to attend additional sessions with their tutors online (Lavin, Leon, and Thomas 1-13). Technology has also made life easier for high school students with disabilities. Disability is not limited to physically challenged high school students, but also entails the students with learning difficulties. These students more often than not are subject to low self-esteem and prejudice, secondary to their disabilities. This greatly affects their learning process as they end up missing classes to shield themselves from ridicule. Technology has aided majority of these students to continue learning making life easier for them. This is attributed to the fact that they are able to access reading materials from the internet, modules from their schools and continue learning. Life has been made easier by technology as the students with disabilities can also comfortably communicate with their tutors free of the fear that their peers will stigmatize them (Arif and Maryam 653-66) . Consequently, technology has made the life of a high school student easier by increasing the materials available for his studies in a short period. Prior to technology, a student would spend an enormous time moving from one corner of the library to another seeking for information to complete their assignment. This translated to tiring and waste of time that often translated to reduced work output. Technology has made access to credible information easy and fast enough. High school students are able to access information for their assignments within a short period. The wide range of information also increases their knowledge base as it exposes them to a wide variety of means to arriving to the same destination. This sharpens their analytical and problem solving skills, as they are able to come up with concrete answers from a wide variety of information (Arif and Maryam 653-66). Technology has not gone uncontested. Taking a genesis with the business executive, technology has been challenged. It has been documented that software incurred by a business executive become obsolete very first. This is due to advancing technology and the business executive to maintain a competitive edge has to keep abreast with it. This means that he will incur more expenses in purchasing software. Consequently, the business executive has to protect the information he transmits technologically since his competitors might access it a demerit to his achievement. As pertains to a stay at home parent, technology has been challenged by its potential that makes the parent not concentrate in her child. This is since the parent is always in the internet making ends meet hence giving little attention to her children. Critics have viewed stay at home parents as killing two birds with one stone. This is since; they receive payments for being on leave, but still make money through working at home (Hogan 25-7). Technology utilization by high school students has been the most contested. Critics view technology as a theft to the ability of the high school student to be innovative. This is since technology is viewed as spoon-feeding the student with all information and there is no thinking involved. This transforms the high school students to recipients and not active initiators of their education process. Critics have documented that if technology were to be phased off, majority of the high school student would not make it past their current grade (Macgill 1-11). In finality, though technology has been challenged, the benefits that it accrues to society cannot be ignored. To a business executive, technology makes his life easier since he is able to access recent information; enhances innovation; automation of services; communication; marketing strategies, all which translate to reduce costs and increased revenues. To the stay at home parent, technology has made life easier as; the parent is able to attend to work while at home; monitor the sites visited by the children; keep in touch with colleagues, and efficient a smooth transition back to work. As pertains to a high school student, technology has made a student’s life easier through; enhancing communication with his school; access to recent information; saves time spent on research; enhances their learning experiences; ability to multi task, and enables students with learning disabilities to access education. It is conclusively evident that technology is core of every being and instead of refuting it; strategies should be implemented on how to curb the pit falls. Work Cited Arif, Seema, and Maryam Ilyas. "Quality Management of Technology Related Services for Student Satisfaction at Private Universities of Pakistan." Interdisciplinary Journal of Contemporary Research in Business 3.1 (2011): 653-66. ABI/INFORM Complete. Web. Nov 9, 2011. Business Technology Office, “How Companies are benefiting from Web 2.0: McKinsey Global Survey results”, McKinsey Quarterly September (2009)1-6. Web. Nov 9, 2011. Hogan, Kathleen. "Pounding the Pavement." Family Advocate 32.1 (2009) 25-7. ABI/INFORM Complete. Web. Nov 9, 2011 Lavin Angeline, Leon Korte and Thomas Davies. "The Impact of Classroom Technology on Student Behavior." Journal of Technology Research 2 (2011) 1-13. ABI/INFORM Complete. Web. Nov 9, 2011 Macgill Alexandra. “Parent & Teenager Internet Use.” Pew Internet & American Life Project (October 24, 2007) 1-11. Web. Nov 9, 2011. Read More