Is Technology Helpful Or Harmful To Society?

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Is Technology Helpful or Harmful to Society “Technology is supposed to make our lives easier, allowing us to do things more quickly and efficiently. But too often it seems to make things harder, leaving us with fifty-button remote controls, digital cameras with hundreds of mysterious features.” (James Surowiecki) Whether or not is known, technology has become too heavily relied on. It is replacing important social factors such as, life skills and communication skills. While technology is created to be beneficial, there must be a point in time where we draw the line. Once face-to-face conversations begin to extinguish, this means that there is too much focus on the “screen culture”. In her writing, “Alone Together”, Sherry Turkle talks …show more content…

Imagine having a business that allows employees to dress and act in whatever manner he or she pleases. We lose the value of our jobs and the professionalism that it provides to help keep things running smoothly. Another harmful result is that individuals will stop self-reflecting. This means that no one will actually stop to ask if how they are dressed is appropriate, or even if how they are postured is professional. This is all because they never have to ask those questions. While employees lose self-reflection skills, the employers do as well. The employer will never have to stop and say, is this person fit for the job, or did I choose the right person. Flammang brings up another point that, not only is human to human communication becoming less relevant, but face-to-face family dinner conversation as well. She mentions that “the household provides such a safe place. Children can learn about thoughtfulness and generosity… and see how conflicts can be managed without blows. At the table, they can learn about their identity and what is expected of informed citizens.” (Flammang 128) Dinner table discussions are no longer being used as a way to learn about current events and even learn about life skills. Dinners are simply …show more content…

Instead, technology is continuously used and the users are so distracted that they do not see any harm being done. Technology is always updating and producing new things, the reason for this is because technology is not perfect. So this means that there is always room for change and improvement. There are still flaws in technology, including things such as printers jamming, internet crashing, and phone calls dropping. Why is it that, even with all of these flaws, people still turn to technology excessively? Turkle talks about people having the desire to have a robotic relationship in place of a real human relationship. She discusses a girl who wanted to “trade in her boyfriend ‘for a sophisticated Japanese robot’ if the robot would produce what she called ‘caring behavior’... She was looking for a ‘no-risk relationship’ that would stave off loneliness.” (Turkle 269-270) This may make you question, the same way that technological devices always need improvement, won’t the robots need improvement at one point. The robot may make a mistake or even be missing the new and improved characteristics of a human being. These characteristics can include the ability to have a meaningful conversation rather than a conversation limited to a scripted vocabulary. The individual’s personal abilities are being limited by dating a robot. A human to human

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