I have to write about the reliance upon technology and if our society is becoming overly dependent upon it. an

Question

I have to write about the reliance upon technology and if our society is becoming overly dependent upon it. any help would be appreciated, thanks.

This is my thesis (so far) :

The dependency on computers is becoming a growing concern in today’s society, although the benefits provide us with convenience and efficiency. These benefits outweigh the concern of dependency because without the reliance the society would never advance.(needs some work...)

Thanks!

Answer 1

All you have to do to answer that is imagine you lived in the year 1700. No cars, trains, phones, electricty, running water, rubber tires etc, no radio, no planes , NO COMPUTERS! lol

Answer 2

I explored some cons for you since you ask for information about how we are overly dependent on technology.

The more computerized our society becomes, the more technologically centered all our processes become, the more we set ourselves up for trouble as well. In a massive scale, nation-wide calamity (like if the nation loses power) we'd be in total chaos. Without computers nothing would function - from stop lights that direct traffic to air plane traffic monitors to cash registers in stores.

We do depend too much on technology because we continually isolate ourselves from reality, as well. Because of how virtual many people's lives become (where they work in front of a computer screen, hold meetings through phone converences, drive thanks to a GPS, watch TV all evening, etc) we are beginning to once again use our brains and skills less and allowing robots to do the work for us. I know it seems sci-fi but think about how little skills we possess, even basic mathematic and computing skills, if someone takes away all calculators. Besides, we're beginning to become fatter and unhealthier because of our preference to interact with technology over more natural means of passing time (walking, running, swimming).

Technology also constantly pushes out older workers from the workforce - people that have medical, educational, even computer degrees from a decade ago have educations that are mostly obsolete in comparison to graduates coming out of school now. Why? Not only is general information changing but the technology used in these job fields is changing radically.

Technology is also being blamed for a process called the "McDonaldization of society". This is where everything in society becomes broken down solely for efficiency, with human beings there mostly to push buttons and operate machinery. Basically, it makes society generic and material-oriented.

In McDonalds, for instance, everything is timed to an art, there is no basic skill anyone needs to know or understand except how to push the button at the fry machine, which automatically times the fries and pops them up, and then the human being just has to do the clumsy, laborious part of the job and the actual free will part (button pushing). This is happening everywhere from factories to assembly lines to even stores (the training of cashiers at cash registers used to focus on math skills and customer service; now it focuses solely on mechanical speed. Places like Walmart even time how long someone takes at the register and you can potentially lose your job if you don't fit into the larger scale machine of efficiency that Walmart wants to be.

Therefore, technology makes it all possible - we have these advanced machines that take all the guesswork and actual human intelligence out of doing anything; it's all input and output now, and it allows corporations to hire unskilled, straight out of high school workers for the lowest money possible because it just doesn't require an education anymore. All you need to be able to do is to operate the machine responsible for doing the job that an actually intelligent human being would have done thirty years ago.

Another aspect of technology to consider is the fact that information is now available worldwide - so much so that a white kid from America can read about a radical terrorist group on the internet, communicate with them and join them - fifty years ago this would have been fundamentally impossible because communication webs didn't span that broadly.

The massive spread of technology is also responsible for a lot of the desensitization we experience - while fifty years ago seeing shocking, gory images of people dying from war wounds would have shocked and motivated people, nowadays you have sites like "rotten.com" that shows nothing but putrid pictures of human beings that died of horrible things.

The advancement of the Internet is very positive too - people in previously very rigid, fundamentalist countries now see how beautiful freedom and human rights are, and want to idolize America. But because what happens in the Western world is SO transparent and endlessly available online (and face it, we're painted as a s*x, drugs, rock and roll, material possession and corruption type of society), we also paint a very negative image of ourselves to other nations (and this incites nothing but hatred).

Anyway, you can keep digging deeper and deeper into this and pulling out various social issues that are impacted by sociology. I think this is plenty of "con" material for now.