Essay Sample on Power of Technology

Introduction

The contemporary age of heightened information technology and artificial intelligence brings unlimited opportunities in the world. More important is the way these technologies help to make human life better by creating more opportunities and efficiency in solving complex life issues. Perhaps the most important thing to conceptualize at this moment is how the new technologies continue to impact the current human life as well as what future holds given the rapid technological advances being experienced globally. There have been various technological inventions in the past such as the telegraph, printing technology, television technology, and the current digital computing technologies and all of them has had both positive impacts as well as negative impacts to certain segments of society.

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Technological changes create jobs and also destroys some and that means every technological innovation is accompanied by new re-alignments which demand the societies to transform. The society must be critical about how they approach the adoption of new technologies taking more time to synthesize and make contributions that would improve the ethical and moral dimensions of the new inventions rather than unqualified adoption. The critical approach would help avert a crisis in the future arising from the shortcomings of every new technological advancement that are often overlooked. Most of the arguments in the literature point toward the critical review of how the new technological innovations impact human life.

The entire arguments of the paper are geared towards the support of thesis statement by showing how the new inventions can be a blessing or a curse based on how the human minds handle the new technologies moving into future.

Google driverless cars have already been tested and legalized for use in a number of states such as Nevada, Florida, and California showing that the invention is likely to be a game changer with regard to road transport and safety. There are various benefits that are likely to arise with the new Google's driverless technology such as an end to human error which eventually causes the highest percentage of road accidents. It means there would be no more human errors caused by drink and driving, negligence, fatigue and many other human-related errors that contribute to high road carnage. Military robots are also revolutionizing the war technologies by making the robots which are fearless, can engage in field battles for long without tiring and are more precise in their operation. These technologies mean few human casualties in the battle as more humans would not be involved in the military combat but use such technologies to invade and destroy the enemy. It means that there will be fewer cries for the parents who offer their children into military service for the purpose of protecting the national territories and interests.

However even with these technologies that continue to ease the way of doing things there are shortcomings that come with the invention of new technologies. The moral and ethical issues that arise with the new technologies are more pressing and perhaps require an immediate and high level of computer coding to resolve. These technologies cannot be applied blindly without questioning several ethical and moral questions that accompany their application. What would happen to the vast devastation that is likely to result in the war due to the inhumane nature of robots in the military? The human rights noted that "robot soldiers would not have human compassion and could easily result in unprecedented devastation ". "What will happen when the self-driving vehicle is required to make an ethical decision whether to cause an accident to one person driving personal vehicles or hit an errant bus carrying forty innocent children?" (Marcus 109).

These critical questions are very important to examine even as new technologies continue to transform the contemporary world. There are several discussions that strive to solve the moral and ethical question of the application of artificial intelligence in military or Google's self-driving cars. Isaac Asimov first attempt to create three important laws that perhaps would help resolve the moral issues. The main problem is that to date there is no computing technology that can help implement Asimov laws in the operationalization of the robots. For now "no one has managed to make a robot that can predict the consequences of its actions". The Asimov laws are not the only exception that has been used to solve the ethical question of using robots in the roads or military but there are several others which have not given solution either" (Marcus 111). The most surprising thing is that the question of morality is also a controversial one even in the human mind. "There are many moral questions that are unanswered to date such as assisted suicide Therefore building a robot machine with the human conscience is a big challenge and brave-hearted souls are working towards to make a breakthrough in resolving the moral issue in artificial intelligence. As more machines with great utility, power, fast, intelligent are made the urgency for their morality increase.

Postman also observes that "every new technology harms and benefits others" (28). The main argument is that human beings must be very critical about new technological innovations. The greater the technology the greater the price. It means that more often the society tends to focus more on the benefits of new technology and overlooks the potential damage it is causing to the people. Second, there are always those people that benefit from the new technologies and try to convince those who do not benefit or those who are harmed by the technology. There is a kind of prejudice that comes with those benefit from the new technology which is dangerous to the society at large (Postman 31). Such prejudice is not healthy for more technological developments that can help reduce the magnitude of the shortcomings. For instance, perhaps the age of computer have degraded community life. The television technology humiliated the print documents and oral tradition was humiliated by the print technology. In every new technology, it means there is something that is lost.

In every technology, there are powerful ideas that are embedded but this means that there are consequences with such ideas. Technology has kind of prejudice just like to "man with a hammer and tend to see everything like a nail "(Postman 30). The consequences of such prejudice are that there are things that the society loses value just like is the case upon the invention of writing and printing when the value for memory eroded. People could easily retrieve information from books and papers and unlike the traditional society that relied on songs, proverbs as the forms of memorizing information. In the contemporary age of information technology perhaps the modern man values information, not wisdom nor memory.

Another idea posited is that technology tends to be mythical. As soon as new technology gets consumed by the society there is a tendency to think that it is God-given or natural. "Technological creations is the natural order of things" (Postman 34). People take little time to critically think about the technology when they are busy using it. It is very difficult for a person using a computer or a teenager who has been born and brought up with a mobile device to sit back and tell the origin of the new technology. Perhaps if you ask them the question of who invented the technology they are using the question will astonish them. When the technologies are adopted as mythical then it poses a dangerous trend to the society since there is little critical questioning modification or checks and balances in its utilization. Mythical acceptance of the technology as it is without giving it a critical thought makes the practice an enemy of future innovation. It is no doubt that the computer age and smartphone and social media technology have made people lazy in terms of reading books and other scholarly works as opposed to sharing funny videos and texting.

Shirk also observes that the internet has opened a new world of possibilities with digital media allowing for sharing and dissemination information globally. The bulk of media is shared online is now created by people who know nothing about professional journalism and practice no professional practices of journalism. However, the fear that the new media will make people stupid is farfetched. "It was there when the bible was being translated into local languages". It fueled religious unrest as vulgar versions and secular writings brought about distractions of order. There are serious fears that emerged to suggest that printing press if left unchecked would probably" cause chaos and dismemberment of European intellectual life" (Shirky 135).

When freedom of media is expanded through technology innovation there are shortcomings that are related to a lot of trash information being relayed and quality of information quickly falls (Shirky 136). The internet seems to restore the culture of writing and reading as opposed to the age of heightened television watching. The central argument fronted is that the problem is not how much irrelevant information is created the most important information is what we do with the expanded knowledge platforms to produce what can pass the test of time. The creation of noble ideas from today's information platforms is what will tell whether such ideas will survive in the future. The text reinforces thesis statement by encouraging critical adoption of new technologies so that critical questions are answered and technology is used skeptically.

Conclusion

Technology has changed rapidly over the past case in point being the inventions in google self-driving vehicles, robot soldiers, and internet among several other technologies. The new technologies bring benefits as well as shortcomings, benefits a certain segment of the society while it harms another. There are more ethical questions that need to be answered even as new technologies are adopted. The questions that haunt more is the fact that human morals are work in progress however such technologies also mean they need to be developed further. There are five things one need to understand first that technology has a greater price, there are winners and losers. The third is that there are epistemological, social or political prejudice, fourth that technological change is addictive and finally technology becomes mythical. The use of the internet can make one smarter or dumber. It all depends on the skeptical nature of the user in synthesizing what to pick and the objective of using it. All this implies that new technologies are good but not without a critical thought to help answer the dark side of new technologies and perhaps push better inventions which answer such critical issues.

Works Cited

Marcus, Gary. "Moral machines." The New Yorker 24 (2012).

Shirky, Clay. "Does the internet make you smarter?" Wall Street Journal 4.6 (2010).

Postman, Neil. "Five things we need to know about technological change." Retrieved December 1 (1998): 2003.