Science and Society Science and Society | Page 28

THE PROS AND CONS OF TECHNOLOGY IN OUR SOCIETY TODAY

Science has had a large impact on our everyday lives specifically when it comes to the field of technology. When it comes to communication, business, research and many other parts of an individual’s life. Even though many people do not always notice it, most of our day goes smoothly because of science and because of technology. Weather it’s our phones, computers, microwaves, fridges, cars, air conditioners, heaters, televisions or radios, our lives would be very different without them. Even though there are many positive effects and impacts of technology on our lives it does have some negative impacts, which makes it a controversial topic.

Technology can have a lot of benefits in our daily lives, and has proven to be very helpful when it comes to business. It has improved the efficiency in different fields of business and can give a competitive advantage to any business that has excelled in its technology. Even when looking at a small business, or something as simple as a coffee shop, applying a production line and other technological advantages can be the edge that one particular coffee shop has over another and can lead to a higher success. However, in the same respect, technology in business can lead to many negative effects. Since we find that lately in many different factories people are replaced with machines, the demand on manual labor has decreased which has lead to a higher rate of unemployment. Since people rely more on machines than they do on individuals, a factory that would have originally required 100 employees would now only require 20. This means that there are 80 that now are left unemployed, which has a negative effect on the economy of a country as well as the individual wellness of these individuals and their families.

In addition to be using used in businesses, technology has recently become very popular in education. Now, blackboards are being replaced with smart boards and books are being replaced by laptops. This has been useful and beneficial since having the access to computers and to the Internet has allowed students to have a lot of access quicker and to a lot more information than they would have previously been able to obtain. In addition internet research is simple and cheap and so it is accessible to all types of people around the world allowing students to have more information and be more globally minded. However, a negative impact of having this great amount of technology in education is that it is very easy to publish information on the internet. Since it is not a complicated process it allows more people to publish information on the Internet and so not all of the information is accurate. Some publishers try to find the most popular topics and report false information on the subject in order to generate more hits and make more money. This leads to a large amount of incorrect and inaccurate information that is found online and so students, as well as the majority of Internet users can find themselves falling in the trap of believing false information since they have learnt to use the internet and rely on the information that it generates. In addition, when it comes to school/university assignments in particular, some students have been known to plagiarize from the information that they find online since there is an abundant amount of websites on the internet, so they think that they won’t get caught.