Technology: Past, Present, and Future

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Technology: Past, Present, and Future

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.

Millions of people throughout the world depend on the automobile to take them from place to place in their busy lives. Take a second to think about how difficult your life was before you began to drive. You had to ask family and friends to drive you to school, work and wherever you wanted to go. Now imagine there are no cars for us to drive. How different would our lives be? In "Cars and Their Enemies," James Q. Wilson looks at this very question. He examines how are lives would be affected if suddenly today, the car was built. Wilson also challenges those who are skeptical about the use of the car and defends his view that the car is a necessity.

Imagine we live in a world of only public transportation. If we wanted to get away, we would have to ride a bike or walk. We would have to shop only for what we could hold. We would have to work close to our homes or take a bus. In other words, our lives would be quite hectic. Now suppose the idea of building a personal automobile is proposed to us. Do we jump at the chance or cower away from it? W...

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...gain.

So in fifty years when you're getting ready to cruise around town in your brand new twenty four-caret gold painted, voice activated, battery powered hovercraft, don't forget to grab your wallet. You're going to need to have your software license, photocopying license, Internet license, listening license, reading license, oh and don't forget your drivers license. If the future of technology comes to this, then all of these licenses are a definite possibility. It may take many years to come to this but if it happens we have to be ready. So in the words of a famous credit card company, "Don't leave home without it."

Works Cited

Samuelson, Pamela. "The Digital Rights War." The Presence of Others. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2000. 315-321

Wilson, James Q. "Cars and Their Enemies." The Presence of Others. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2000. 303-314

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