Essay on The Age of Technology

Technology has always been a controversial subject between conservative people and innovators. Some people believe that it is a great tool to connect cultures and improve education and innovation in our society today, but others view it as a menace in our lives. “Growing Up Tethered” by Sherry Turkle and “George Orwell...Meet Mark Zuckerberg” by Lori Andrews both view technology as a dangerous tool. They believe in the many drawbacks of technology and the harm it can do to our lives with no explanation of the positive effects it has had on our society. “Our Future Selves” by Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen plays the role of a positive look at technology and its role in our lives today. It gives examples of how advancing technology helps us and improves so many peoples’s lives. We can use Schmidt and Cohen’s essay as a lens to view the other two texts and gain a different understanding of what they are writing about.

Modern technology has seen many debates about its usefulness, its relevance, and its impact on society. Two main parties have bound together, one arguing that the impact of modern technological advancements has had a positive effect on society, while the other side believes that it only makes things worse. In their argumentative pieces, Charles Seife and Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen address the issue of technology in the modern world, although their arguments vary drastically, through the use of various rhetorical devices.

In his essay, “Five Things We Need to Know About Technological Change,” Neil Postman brings up a plethora of ideas on the topic of our ever-changing landscape in the technological world, discussing at length the problems of technology and culture. In his first point, Postman states that “technology giveth, and technology taketh away” (Postman, 27). His argument insists that in a culture swept up in technology, humans do not stop and ask questions regarding the possible detriments of new inventions. He continues on to say that though technology favours some individuals, it may harm others, or neglect a group of people entirely. In spite of this, humans continue to use and expand upon technologies as they emerge. Next, the author discusses how

Neil Postman, writer, educator, critic and communications theorist, has written many books, in addition to his recent book Technopoly. He is one of America's biggest and most visible cultural critics, who attempts to analyze culture and history in terms of the effects of technology on western culture. For Postman, it seems more important to consider what society loses from new technology than what it gains. To illustrate this, Postman uses the Egyptian mythology called "The Judgment of Thamus," which attempts to explain how the development of writing in Egyptian civilization decreases the amount of knowledge and wisdom in the society. He traces the roots of technology to show how technology impacts the moral and intellectual attitude of people. Postman seems to criticize societies with high technologies, yet he seems naive to the benefits technology has given society. Postman is a man who is caught in a changing world of technology who can be considered fairly conservative in his views regarding technology. His lucid writing style stimulates thoughts on issues in today's technological society; however because of his moral interpretations and historical revisions, his ethos is arguable. For every good insight he makes, he skips another mark completely.

Within the last couple of decades, technology has become a huge part in everyone’s daily lives. Everyday we look at our phone almost every five minutes and when we get home we all hop on some other form of technology such as our computers or televisions. However, this is almost exactly what Aldous Huxley and Neil Postman fear. There are some truths and some falsehoods to the statements that Postman proposed such as the idea that we will begin to enjoy our oppression, we will be ruled by the very things that we love, and that we will eventually be thrown so many lies that we will seize to know what the truth is and we will be exploring both sides of these assertions.

Technology, and the advancement thereof, tends to kindle a wide range of emotions among the general population. If you ask a younger individual, they may tell you it’s the best thing to happen to society, fostering knowledge, health, and connectedness; older individuals may view it as the decline of humanity or degradation of personal privacy. Either way you choose to perceive technology, it’s undoubtedly had an unquantifiable impact on every aspect of our lives. Of these facets of life, the world of politics, specifically, has been flipped upside down, arguably, for the better.

Imagine the impact technological innovations have had on society? How much did technology influence society a decade ago, and how much does it influence society now? Technology was created from humans to become a more efficient specie. Although technology has advanced society with respect to technology and efficiency, it has also created problems not previously seen because of the use of technology. Edward Tenner, a writer and technology consultant, wrote an article titled “Another Look Back, and a Look Ahead” published in 1996. In his article Tenner argues, through the use of the rhetorical appeal ethos, compare and contrast, and cause and effect, that society is advancing at an alarming rate and suggests a “retreating from intensity”

When one is reading about the world in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, immediately the goal of society is seen: technological progress. Instead of the manner in which society acts today, with love, family and success being important focuses: technologic growth and improvement is at the forefront. Technology, in many ways, can produce a positive impact; however, when taken to an extreme, the consequences could be devastating, as shown in this book.

My role in this essay, of course, is to experiment the Postman’s comment the context of our course. In the context, Neil Postman mentions that technology is like not an unmixed blessing and technology first gives and then it will take away something from us. It 's well known, I would say that the technology is like a business and it has its own cost. For example, if you spend your money on the technology then you get the access to use it at any time. Under such conditions, we can easily conclude that technology is a business and always comes at a price.

Every day the world is changing and things are done differently. Technology has also affected the way students are taught and in which they learn. It has changed the classroom. Technology saves us time and allows us to access material in only minutes. “The Internet and online subscription databases, even as a supplement to the printed works in the library, allow students to see, and force them to consider or reject, points of view that they might never have encountered in decades past” (Gow 4).With all the time technology produces, it also has downsides and it also may have created a less intelligent society.

The evolution of technology has changed society in both positive and negative ways. People all over the world use and benefit from modern technology. Technology has simplified the access to many tools people need in education, medicine, communication, transportation, etc. However, using it too often has its drawbacks as well. In most cases, the time of finishing projects is cut by more than half with the help of technology. Many people do not realize that technology has its negative affects society as well, and its rapid advances has changed life for worse in a number of different ways.

Technology surrounds us. Like water in the ocean, people are swimming in technology each and every day. From the radio playing a favorite song to a text received about the results of a game, people use technology constantly. However, there is a point at which people are overtaken by technology; when the wave engulfs us and there is no way out. People are becoming more and more dependent on technology. Ever since technology began heavily integrating itself into society, many major uses have developed, but at a cost that brings on dangerous side effects, both mental and physical, as shown by the potential Y2K bug, that will continue unless active measures are sought out by those so dependent on technology.

Technology is continuously developing and has begun creating shortcuts for the American society. As a society we need to find a balance between our technological use and our everyday life. In my opinion, society has become too dependent on technology. The more advanced technology becomes, the more it seems to be gaining control over our lives. Even though technology is offering society many beneficial qualities; it also is causing many negative effects to occur. Technology is affecting society socially, mentally, and physically.

The digital age has brought about many changes in the way we conduct business, education, entertainment and mental health. The trend to incorporate technology into our mental health programs, while in its infancy, continues to grow in popularity and use by both educational and private mental health providers. There has been a great deal of discussion on the methods, ethics, problems and benefits of this new technology, however little research has been done on the effectiveness of this method of counseling on clients.

Remember the days of the Old West? The women walked around with their parasols or rode in a horse drawn carriage and the men rode fast and furious on their horses. Everything you needed was right there in town: the saloon, the general store, and the barber. When one needed to get somewhere, they would walk. If they needed to travel far, there were steam-powered locomotives. As towns and cities grew larger, it was not so convenient to walk everywhere. There was a need for a machine that could get us around to where we had to go. Technology was becoming a bigger part of the times and the machine we now know today as the automobile was invented.