The World As We Know It Is Ending Essay

Advances in technology has brought many benefits but also problems. The use of new technology creates moral and ethical problems and conflicting attitudes in society. The complexity of the issues and the pace with which technology changes mean that legislators have difficulty making laws that can keep in control of these changes.

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.

Advances in technology has brought many benefits but also problems. The use of new technology creates moral and ethical problems and conflicting attitudes in society. The complexity of the issues and the pace with which technology changes mean that legislators have difficulty making laws that can keep in control of these changes.

In his work, “Introduction: Nanotechnology, Society, and Ethics”, CalPoly Associate Professor of Philosophy Patrick Lin writes, “Let’s take a step back and consider any given technology we have created: gunpowder, the printing press, the camera, the automobile, nuclear power, the computer, Prozac, Viagra, the mobile phone, the Internet. Undoubtedly, these have brought us much good, but each has also changed society in important, fundamental ways and caused new problems, such as increased pollution, urban sprawl, cyber-crimes, privacy concerns, intellectual property concerns, drug dependencies, new cases of sexually-transmitted diseases, other unintended health problems, mutually-assured destruction and much more. The point here is not that we would have been better off without these inventions. Rather, we should come to terms that our creations can have unintended or unforeseen consequences” (Lin, n.d., p. 1). Lin’s point goes across the board for all technologies, there will be unforeseen consequences, some will be good and some will certainly be perceived as bad.

a) Briefly explain the advances made in TWO of the following areas during the mid-18th century in the

Technology has been improving at rates faster than the society itself over the past 3 decades. The beginnings of machinery used during the Industrial Revolution was meant to aid and improve the working conditions of factory workers; while machinery did just that it also took away many jobs as technology grew to be more reliable than human beings themselves. No one would have expected that improved machinery created by humans themselves would strip human beings of their source of living and create economic stagnation. As artificial intelligence came into play and continues to improve, humans will slowly be phased out of the workforce society. The day in which people will not be needed in the workforce will come or rather in a matter of time as our electronic counterparts are faster, more accurate, more reliable, and way beyond the power of humans to keep check. Technological improvements of the society do not promote the moral principle of utilitarianism.

Online technologies are beneficial to the modern world. It can improve a person’s education, business, and helps in everyday life hassles. It has become an essential part of the way that people live and it is very likely that people would be a loss without it. In “Ethics and the New Genetics,” the Dalai Lama claims that to ethically use new technological advancements we need to develop a “moral compass”. Peter Singer, in “Visible Man: Ethics in a World without Secrets,” discusses whether new technology and “openness” makes our lives better, or if the lack of privacy takes away the rights of individuals. Both authors discuss how technology is advancing very rapidly and can significantly have major pros and cons to society. The two authors, however, have different viewpoints in which how the society can determine when technology has become ethical. Dalai Lama is firm believer that technology is evolving so fast that ethics could hardly keep up with it. He addresses how people should have ethical standards when dealing with the internet. Thus, he is directly proving to us how he would want society to ethically determine when and how technology should be used. Yet, on another spectrum, Peter Singer argues that although ethically, internet is invading our privacy, this invasion of privacy is the only way that the public is safe and people should brutally discover the truth about everything but somehow it can cause harm. Peter Singer and Dalai Lama both agree how the new online

Much of society uses technology for many tasks that include communication, school, jobs, etc. Most people think that using technology has its negative effects such as physical and emotional. Those can be generally related to the biography, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot due to the fact that Henrietta’s family was not acknowledged about using the cells of Henrietta without their permission or Henriettas. Another example from Unit 3 would be Prometheus: The Friend of Man which shows that when Prometheus, the main protagonist, spends time on Earth helping man give them the fire from the god, Jupiter. The two units The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks and Prometheus: The Friend of Man both support the following idea about the responsibility people have developing new technologies.

With the development of society, people's values are changing quite a lot. People tend to focus more time and energy on pursuing economic benefits and material satisfaction while ignoring the importance of morality. Here, my point is that no matter what technology we develop, no matter how much contribution and improvement this technology will bring to people. When we develop this technology, we have to obey ethical and moral rules. For instance, in “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks”, Rebecca Skloot recounts that doctors and scientists

Thesis: As science and the internet develops for human benefit, it leads to moral decay in society.

Technology is a useful servant but a dangerous master. This quote by Christian Lous Lange, summarizes the story of the veldt, its morals, and most importantly, society’s views on technology itself. The line where this blurs is one we fear, and usually do not recognize at first. Whether you agree with this quote or not, it is a disturbing perspective on the advance of knowledge. Imagining a world where technology engulfs the mind of the children, poisons them with thoughts of rage and revenge is a world where the next generation is corrupt. When an innocent pure mind becomes so damaged to where a child wishes their caregivers dead, that is the death of an empathetic, working, society.

Myths are a good representation of how technology works in a society. This is due to their valuable lessons which relate the impact of technological history on society over a period of time. Two authors by the names of Robert J. Sawyer and Gary Marcus elaborate the connection between science fiction and ethics to technology which compares to Prometheus’s myth. Sawyer explains the relationship in her essay “The Purpose of Science Fiction” in which he justifies that science fiction can portray the outcomes of future technology. Marcus justifies this connection in his essay “Moral Machines” when he describes how automated machinery should include ethical moralities in reference to how they are being used in real life scenarios. Sawyer and Marcus reveal the relationship of science fiction and ethics to technology which relates to the themes of Prometheus through science fiction and ethical motives.

The Medieval Machine by Jean Gimpel, shows information about the technological accomplishments of the middle Ages. The basic idea is that during the two centuries from around 1050 Western Europe went through a kind of industrial revolution that was just as important as of the nineteenth century’s.

The large number of practical and useful inventions brought forward during the time leading up to and including the period known as the Industrial Revolution had a significant impact on both American society and the world. The transition that took place resulted in reliance on mechanical sources of power/energy rather than the traditional human or animal sources to produce the products needed (Hackett, 1992). One of

Be the 1750's, the Industrial Revolution had begun. In the beginning, inventions were limited to cotton weaving. This quickly changed with new inventions such as the spinning jenny and the water powered frame. A problem existed in which yarn was not being fed fast enough to the weaver, but in 1769 the spinning jenny and the water powered frame solved this problem by providing yarn faster. Edmund Cartwright, in 1880, invented the power loom, and it combined both the machine's characteristics and purposes in one machine. Cleaning cotton was always an extremely difficult and time consuming job. In 1793, Eli Whitney created a brilliant invention, the cotton gin. This marvelous invention could clean cotton 50 times faster then the average person. These new inventions all assisted the manufacturing of cotton goods by speeding up the process. (members.aol).