Advantages of Using Technology Essay Example

Over the last couple of years, the use of technology has almost become second nature to people. Everywhere that you look there is someone using some form of technology. Some people have gotten so used to the use of the technology that they would not be able to function id the technology was taken away. The use of technology has changed the quality of our lives and the way we live tremendously. The use of technology has greatly helped us in many aspects of our lives. However, like any other thing, it comes with its advantages and disadvantages. This paper is going to look at the advantages of technology to the quality of life of people.

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Hypothesis: The use of technology has improved the quality of life of human beings.

Thesis Statement: Technology should be used in more industries to improve the quality and quantity of the product.

One advantage of technology is in improving manufacturing and food production. The use of technology has helped to streamline the production of food all over the world. In the days before the use of technology, people used to use crude ways to plant and cultivate their crops. They used sticks and digging plows to plant and weed their crops. Without a way to control them, most of the crop would mostly be eaten by pests and the remaining would die from diseases. The resultant produce was little and the return on investment was very low. With the introduction of technology to the farming industry, all these have changed. There are now machines that can plant crops on huge tracts of land in very little time. There are also pesticides and herbicides to control pests, disease, and weeds. This has led to an improvement in both the quantity and quality of the produce. Technology has also played a huge role in the manufacturing industry. In the manufacturing industry when making many products of the same kind, they should be exactly the same. For example, in the production of cars, the cars that exit the manufacturing line, should be identical to each other. If this was done by humans, this consistency and similarity would be hard to achieve. With technology, you can just program machines to do something in a specific way and the machines will produce the same output over and over again. Furthermore, the machines do not get tired hence the production can be done all day every day to increase the quantity of the product.

The use of technology has also greatly helped the healthcare and emergency sector. The healthcare system has seen many transformations in recent years but none has been more beneficial to it as the use of technology. In the years before technology, crude ways of treatment were used to cure diseases that people did not even know. A person would just look at your symptoms and guess the disease and prescribe a medication. There was no test to prove that you really have the said illness. Many people were misdiagnosed and given the wrong treatment and as a result, they died. The use of technology has helped improve this. Now if someone is ill and goes to the hospital, proper tests like taking a blood sample are done before the doctors give you your medication. Furthermore, the use of technology has enabled previously incurable diseases, to be managed better and some can now even be treated. For example, HIV/AIDS was previously incurable and being told that you had it was like a death sentence. Although its cure has not been found yet, the virus can now be better managed. This management can enable someone to live a healthy and long life even with the disease. Cancer is also another disease that has been cured and managed better due to the use of technology. Chemotherapy machines that help people with cancer to live better lives is because of the improvement of technology. Emergency services have also been improved due to the use of technology. Before technology, when someone had a medical emergency, they would have probably died as there were no effective and fast ways to send for help. Now, help is only a phone call away and as a result, millions of lives have been saved.

Technology has also helped to improve security and crime prevention. For example, in airports and other high-security places, there are many metal detectors to stop anyone from carrying weapons into the planes. Before, there were many cases of people carrying weapons to planes while concealed in their clothes and bags. With the introduction of these metal detectors, there have been fewer cases of terrorism in planes. Another example of the use of technology in security is the use of CCTV cameras and drones. These cameras record every action that happens in a specific location. This record acts as an important piece of evidence to what happened. Police can use this video recording to find culprits of a crime and ensure that they do not get the wrong person. The police can also use these cameras to prevent attacks and crimes. Say the police think that there will be a terrorist attack that will be carried out on a place with many people. The police cannot go manually looking at everybody in order to prove they are not the terrorists. Use of drones and cameras will make their jobs a thousand times easier. The drones will take an overview look at the people and the police can identify the person. This however comes with a disadvantage. When the police use newer technology to catch criminals, the criminals also use technology to evade the police. In the end it becomes a case of who can use the technology they have in a better way.

Technology also helps in travel and exploration. Technology has helped us to be able to travel to places that we would have otherwise never been to. Airplanes are one such feat of technology. You can literally get in a flight and in less than a day be anywhere in the world. According to Flight Aware, a live flight tracker, at midnight of January 6th, 2013, four thousand two hundred and twenty-five planes were airborne with a total of approximately half a million people on board. This shows that at any given time, almost half a million people are airborne in planes traveling. This is because of its incredible quickness than any other forms of transport. Other forms of transport like vehicles, bullet trains and ships have also come to life due to the embracement of technology. All these forms of transportation have made the world look like a tiny globe that you can get anywhere that you want in an instant. Exploration has also been improved by employing some aspects of technology. Before technology, people used to look at the moon and just wonder what it is. By the use of space shuttles and rockets, people have walked on the moon. This was unimaginable in the olden days. There have also been explorations done on mars to find if there are signs of life. This is just as a result of the advanced technology that was used.

Technology has also been used to improve the quality of education. For example, a student can now get all the information that he needs about a subject through using the internet. Teachers can also give assignments and tests to students through the internet. A student from Australia can take a course in a university in the United States while he still lives in his home country. Research has also been improved as the researchers have access to a huge amount of data in form of eBooks and online articles. This ensures that the researchers come up with an in-depth research that will ensure accurate results. The use of technology can also help bring some fun into the classroom. It can get boring to the students if they learn the same things every day in the exact same way. This can lead to them not understanding what the teacher is saying. By using computers and other technologies to ensure that the students enjoy the class, the students will understand better and hence perform better. Schools and collages now have a better chance to enroll more students to their courses. This is because with the use of the internet, they can enroll students from anywhere in the world. The lecturers would just have to use skype and other software to teach the students. With all these advantages, there has been a main cause of concern of the use of technology in the education sector. Students are now able to cheat in exams easier than ever. They can access all the information that they need through the use of their smartphones. This makes ost of the results got questionable.

The use of technology also has its bad side. For example, the way that people have lost touch with one another due to the use of mobile phones. Many people now just stare at their phones all day long and end up not spending time with people they love. This habit has led to some people even walking into oncoming traffic while their heads are buried in their smartphones. Cyberbullying is also another disadvantage of the use of technology. The use of the internet can make some people be targets of cyberbullying. Some cases of cyberbullying are so bad that the victims become stressed and go into a depression. If these people are not helped to overcome their depression, some might end up committing suicide. The improvement in the technology has also resulted in an improvement in the technology that criminals use. This has made finding them even harder than before.

Conclusion

Despite these few drawbacks, it is evident that the use of technology has greatly helped to improve the overall quality of life of human beings. From education to healthcare to even having fun, all these have been improved by adding some aspects of technology in them. The hypothesis is then proven true as technology greatly aids to improve the life of every person.

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