The Impact of Technology Essay Example for Free

The Impact of Technology Essay The society we live in is completely integrated with technology, we are surrounded by and we live on technology. One of the definitions of â€Å"technology† given by Webster’s Third New International Dictionary is â€Å"the totality of the means employed by a people to provide itself with the objects of material culture†, and as a matter of fact, almost every little work we do can be considered technology dependent. Today we are all identified with the technological device we are carrying, which must be up to date. For many of us, living without technology I like living without air†. Many people don’t realize how much they are engaged to their gadgets and how much they affect our lives; I think that most of us would struggle to live without these little comforts while some researchers of the University â€Å"La Sapienza Di Roma† concluded that most of the people, especially from 16 to 25 years old, feel lost when they don’t have their mobile phones with them. An excerpt from the telegraph confirms us what we previously affirmed: â€Å"In an international study called Unplugged, volunteers at 12 universities around the world were asked to keep detailed diaries while spending 24 hours in a tech and information blackout. They found out that youngsters reported sickness and fidgety, they felt really uncomfortable and like if they had nothing to do. â€Å"They kept looking for the phones, even though they werent carrying them. † Technology has clearly become a huge influence on our lives, but how did we reach this point? Our addiction to technology probably started with computers taking over our society as we used to know it. Nowadays, everywhere you look, computers are making our life more comfortable since they are commonly used items in many areas. A PC is essential to people who run organizations or industries, but also the housewife who doesn’t know how to use a Personal Computer has to deal with one, since almost anything we know is run or made by a computers, most medical equipment use computers and also the most simple household appliance has a computer inside. Most of the professions today involve the use of PCs since also in a pharmacy you would have a hard time keeping track with what medication to give to a patient without that â€Å"mechanical brain† that would be hard to live without. Its only when something goes wrong that we realize how necessaries they are, if we think about the world without computers we would realize that we haven’t done much more than using them in the past few years; researchers in the medical field wouldn’t have found a lot of cures to diseases since most of them were found with the help of processors. Movies like, Pixar’s Toy story, Avatar or 2012 would never have been made since they are based on computer graphics that cannot be emulated analogically. Counting votes would be much slower and space exploration wouldn’t be possible without the help of computers. That’s why, since most of our progresses in the recent past are a consequence of our use of computers, we call the recent past as computer revolution or digital revolution. The definition of revolution is based on the idea of something that rapidly changed and improved. This led to individuals that can transfer information freely and access to information is so easy compared to in the past. Recently, some social analysts defined our times as the â€Å"information age†. This condition of being always capable to get information started when computer microminiaturization started, because the fast evolution of technology in daily life permitted rapid global communications and networking to shape modern society. It can be said that this revolution started with the diffusion of the smartphones, which started many years ago but had a massive boost with the launch of the iPhone, an hybrid between a phone and a computer, something always connected to the world. This idea changed the technological market with many companies trying to follow Apple creature’s steps, evolving into a new device that is far from what mobiles were ten years ago. They have become faster and more powerful just like computers but they can also be connected to the internet anywhere in order to: read newspapers, mail for business, be always able to make a research on the web or communicate with friends, which has proven to change everything. As a matter of fact people feel the need to be updated with what is happening around them. Big contributors to this are websites like Facebook and Twitter, which are supposed to bring, people closer together but they are actually doing the opposite. The information age can be separated into three general parts, which are information storage, information transmission, and computation. When the information storage phase occurred, the world’s capacity to store data has seen a dramatic boost of from just 2600 terabyte in 1985 to 18 Exabyte in 1994, to over 55. 5 in 1999, and 400 in 2011 at the point that nowadays, as Mitchell Capor Said, getting information off the Internet is like drinking from a fire Hydrant. Not only there was an increase of the databases, but also technology is spreading to any family, any student, any common citizen since the cost of technology is decreasing day by day and today we can afford a really powerful desktop for a few hundred dollars and we can all access the internet with less money we spend on a night out. Internet, big contributor to the information age and all those changes is the Internet, which has obviously had a massive impact on society. The Internet is a fail-proof network because even if a large area is disabled, the information is rerouted to somewhere else. The Internet is the crucial platform for accelerating the exchange of information and it is also the main emerging form of media. Internet is, in fact, making some medias obsolete and is the reason why many companies are changing the way they relate to their clients, because it is a tough competition to newspaper and broadcaster offering most of the times a cheaper and vaster choice to anyone. The main example is the success of YouTube, which is now eroding the market share that television channels used to have by having, according to the company itself on the official blog, four billion videos streamed per day. New technology is affecting anyone’s life also because is something that created millions of jobs but also took away a few at the same time modifying the economy of some sectors. It created jobs because the new technology needed to be repaired, designed, and used in many businesses. However, it took away jobs because some factory workers were no longer needed as more efficient machines were built to replace them. Out of all of the technology that has been produced during the last 30 years; the Internet has created the largest amount of jobs. Labourers must compete in a globalized job market instead of earning a living from what they used to do. Middle-class people of society are affected the most by the job change because they can either move up towards jobs that require a good education (such as engineers, scientists, journalists), or they can move down towards low-skill and low-wage jobs. About 30% of the modern workforce usually consists of the jobs that require a good education and good qualifications and the number ises exponentially if we just consider the really developed countries since, as we already proved, a useful worker in modern times also has to well know how to deal with computers. Technology has also had a big impact on language and culture since it helps the spreading and melting of different and distant worlds, favouring globalization. Our though processes have been changed by the revolution in technology, that’s probably just the beginning of a new era. From all of the information that I have researched I have concluded that technology is having more and more impact on our lives because it is becoming more integrated into what we do. Nearly everything thing we do in our everyday lives is connected to technology and from what I can see, not many people would be able to cope without the technology that we have today. I believe that in the future, if our race continues to survive for an extended period of time, all life will either depend entirely on technology or not at all. Another reason that I have concluded for why technology is having more impact is that humans are adapting more and the technology is becoming more ‘compatible’ with us and to our ways of thinking. We are becoming more connected to technology and we are being more influenced at the same time. A good example to support my conclusion is that if there were to be a new piece of technology that came out in the shops (such as a new type of iPhone) then many peoples’ lives would be greatly affected whether it is their jobs, or language etc. that is affected. Our way of thinking has been completely changed and it is believe that humans as a race will probably never go back thinking like they used to. Revolutions will keep on occurring and the technology will keep on improving which will obviously keep on affecting our life in many ways which concludes my research paper on the idea of technology having impact on our lives.