Are Technology Advances Bad for Society?

Steven Thai Ms. Katie English 110 Feb 28th, 2013 Are Technology Advances Bad For Society? Over the past 30 years, humans always tried to create something that helps us reduce the amount of work we have to do. Games were created to help human release our stress while mobile phones help us to call and access the internet anywhere we want. Technologies really help us in every task of our life. However, technological advances are bad for our society because of addiction, censorship, and they may lead us into another technological weapons war between countries around the world.

First consider how addictive technology has become. According to Sherry Turkle from TED Talk, her daughter spent time with her friends together looking at their mobile phones devices (Ted. com). These kids had so much fun on their mobile phones that they didn’t even look at their friends. On the other hand, technology became an essential part of our lives right now. Most of us spend time with our electronic devices that we forget where we were standing, what we were doing, or what is the purpose and objective of our life. What makes us addicted to mobile phones?

Nowadays, we can do almost everything with our cellphones, such as playing videos games, accessing social networks, and watching videos online. These things have become too addictive to us, and we have spent so much time on such devices. Look back to 20 years ago, back when the time technologies were not very common compared to today. Eventually, we spent more time with each other; we hung out with friends. Technologies are advancing so rapidly that we have become addicted and have forgotten what surrounds us. Some people might argue that there is also a good side of technology advances.

According to Dr. Rick Nauert, a Senior Editor of Psych Central, there was an unexpected discovery that playing video games helped human-beings reduce the production of the stress-related hormone cortisol (Psychcentral. com). In order to prove this, Dr. Nauert recorded a group of 23 newly recruited employees of a Montreal-based call center to play games. Later on, he found an amazing result that the games showed an average 17 percent reduction in cortisol production compared to the group who did not play games (Psychcentral. com). This showed that echnology advances can be applied for good purposes to our life. Although technologies help us to reduce the stress related hormone, it brings to us many health problems. Dr. Ripudaman, a master in science and a frequent computer user, claimed that there are heaths concerned when you sit and work in front of the computer for a long time, such as eyes problems from bright screen, and wrist ache after working at the computer all day (Ripudaman). In addition, if we keep using the computer for a long time, these problems grow bigger.

We might have joint problems, and our eyes have to work a lot so they get worse, in which case it costs us a lot of money for eyes and back surgery (Ripudaman). Another thing to be concerned about when we use technology is government censorship. You would feel bad if you lost your own privacy when the government tracked down your phone record, and eavesdropped on your phone call. This is the world when you need your own privacy, but most of our technological devices such as cellphones and laptops are tracked down by our own government every minute.

According to Jennifer Valentino, the FBI was concerned by the citizens when they had the rights to access people’s phone record after the attack of September 11th, 2001 (Devries). Additionally, Professor Stephen Vladeck from American University Washington College of Law had put a good question to all of us; “How can you protect the First Amendment rights at the same time as you protect the government’s interest in secrecy? ” (Vladeck). More importantly, no one among us would have see that our record had been tracked down, which should be a concern for an individual’s freedom.

Others might claim that the government is doing the right thing in order to protect national security. By tracking down citizens’ record the government can easily find terrorists, who are trying to attack their country. After the incident on September 11th, the concerns over the government keeping track of people’s technological devices who they suspected as terrorists and a threat to the country (Vladeck). To answer for that, we should take China as an example; where the presses have been ranked as “not free” by Freedom House (Wikipedia. rg). In China, everything is monitored by the government mostly technological devices. We feel bad when our privacy are managed by the government. Therefore, these technology advances are not helping our life get better. Furthermore, technological advances help the government to access our privacy easily compared to our past 50 years. It leads us to a question, should we continue to use devices like cellphones, laptops or smartphone when the government is monitoring our activities through those devices?

Lastly, technological advances can lead us to a world war. Countries with strong economies like the United States, China, and Russia always compete to have the strongest technologies for weapons in their hands. The rapid changes in technology help many countries in the world to create their own weapons, tanks, aircrafts, and nuclear bombs. Why are these countries are competing for war technology advances? Take a look at it this way, when a weapon or a bomb is created, it will be tested in Iraq or Afghanistan.

There will be more deaths and bigger destruction as the technology of those weapons further advanced. The founder and leader of the Muttahida Quami Movement, Altaf Hussain, has brought us great attention to a possibility of a third world war, where these imperial powers continued to act in a presumptuous manner in world affairs (mqm. org). In fact, world powers countries should stop competing for war technologies advances with each other in the present world to make a better world, to bring peace to those countries whose need it.

However, there are others who oppose that the United States and Russia are creating nuclear bombs and missiles defenses to protect their own national security. In reality, they are creating these defense systems to make other countries to be afraid of them. The more weapons and bombs created, the more deaths and destruction the world has to suffer. Instead of using billions and billions of dollars to make technological advances that kill people, we should use that huge amount of money to improve education, health care, and reduce the amount of starvation.

There will be more people will feel happy as the government will use money to solve social and political problems. In general, by not using money to develop war technological advances, we can save a lot of lives, rather than killing them by weapons, bombs, and missiles and so on. In conclusion, technological advancement has seen many negative impacts on our society; it causes unhealthy addiction, encourages government censorship, and might lead to another destructive world war. We must stop using technology devices, we should stand together to stop these bad problems from our life.

For the great future of our young generation, for the better living of our life, we must stop the bad effect of technologies on our life. Work Cited “A Third World War May Start If Countries Continued to Compete with Each Other for Superiority: Altaf Hussain. ” A Third World War May Start If Countries Continued to Compete with Each Other for Superiority: Altaf Hussain. Mutahida Quami Movement, 7 Jan. 2013. Web. 21 Feb. 2013. <http://www. mqm. org/ArticleDetail. aspx? id=938bec50-9e7f-4b7e-9916-dfcd23ba5c27>. “Censorship in China. Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 29 Jan. 2013. Web. 21 Feb. 2013 <http://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Censorship_in_China>. Devries, Jennifer V. “Covert FBI Power to Obtain Phone Data Faces Rare Test. ” Online. wsj. com. The Wall Street Journal, n. d. Web. 23 Feb. 2013. <http://online. wsj. com/article/SB10001424052702303567704577519213906388708. html >. Hall, Canseco. “Texas A&M International University – Laredo, Texas. ” Violent Video Games Help Relieve Stress, Depression, Says TAMIU Professor. N. p. , 17 June 2010.

Web. 21 Feb. 2013. <http://www. tamiu. edu/newsinfo/7-08-10/article5. shtml>. Nauert, Rick. “Video Game Lowers Stress Hormone | Psych Central News. ” Psych Central. com. N. p. , 24 Oct. 2007. Web. 21 Feb. 2013. <http://psychcentral. com/news/2007/10/24/video-game-lowers-stress-hormone/1446. html>. Singh, Ripudaman. “Health Problems Caused by Computer. ” Articlesbase. com. Articlesbase, 21 Mar. 2009. Web. 21 Feb. 2013. <http://www. articlesbase. com/health-articles/health-problems-caused-by-computer-828096. html>.