Monday, November 28, 2005

Impact of Technology

Ah yes. Many of these points have been covered to death by many journalists. However, I offerred to finish my sister's essay for school for a case of beer (less than 1/2 hr of work for a case of beer, not a trade in my mind.)

Anyway, I figured I'd post a snippet:

“The utilization of computers not only for major scientific and technological applications but also in every single human activity has led us to neglect the need for coexistence with nature, while our impact on nature has grown immeasurably”. (Orlin Damyanov, 1996, pg 4 of 9). Computers represent a key pinnacle in technological change of the 20th and 21st centuries: computers have increased the rate of scientific and engineering achievements exponentially; moreover, with the advent of the internet, satellites, and other communication equipment, the amount of communication has increased. However, this increase in communication can be seen as a mixed blessing, at best. We communicate more, our cell phones are always on, yet, many people in the world, religious and non-religious alike, believe, that, on average, the human race is actually worse at communicating than it was before the computer age. This is mainly because we no longer try to communicate with people face to face as often. Very much connected to this pitfall is our disconnection with nature. We no longer are directly connected to nature; our computers, appliances, and other technology separate us from it. This is not inherently a bad thing; however, take for example, our lack of direct knowledge of how polluting effects us (although in the past 40 years, environmentalism has increased our education on these matters). When our garbage goes to a landfill, we do not actually see this landfill with our own eyes, hence we do not fully appreciate the impact our unnecessary garbage has on the environment. This causes many to pollute more than they would had they truly understood the impact it has on our environment, as we depend on nature for everything.

Technology, for most of the human history, has been a mixed blessing at best. Being able to wield fire allowed us to keep warm at night, and live in colder climates, but it also allowed increased pillaging and war. Similarly, our increased rate of technological development in the 21st century allows us to live in increasing comfort and pleasure; however, technological change is perhaps developing quicker than we can fully react to it’s many effects... "



Wow. I just realized how easy essay writing comes to me. If only technical paper writing were these easy ;)

To the point however, I wasn't just spewing those ideas just to write a college paper. I actually believe them. Western civilization is crappier at communicating than it was, and, as much as the environmentalism movement is shoved in our faces, most people either don't get it, or just don't care.

3 Comments:

At 7:10 p.m., Blogger Zutroy said...

First rule of Cheat Club: You do not talk about cheat club.

Second rule of Cheat Club: YOU DO NOT TALK ABOUT CHEAT CLUB

Some day this entry will get cached by the happy omniprescent spiders at Google and this blantant declaration of academic misconduct will be preserved for anyone to see!

There have been instances of people with degrees getting their feet held to the fire years later, and still facing professional reprimand from it.

 
At 12:46 a.m., Blogger Medieval said...

Only way to keep people legit is by reprimanding them :)

Not that I would like to get reprimanded for something inane like smoking a bit of pot; but cheating is cheating.

If you mean getting a previous year's test from a foreign kid, since the prof tries to keep his previous years hidden so he can be lazy and use the same one, that ain't cheatin'. ;)

Copying an assignment / having someone do it for you is hardly cheating. That's why exams/tests are worth 80% or more in undergrad; to make this kind of "cheating" useless; it just hurts you in the end.

 
At 2:03 a.m., Blogger Medieval said...

Or like those people getting fired for blogging?

Thankfully, I don't have an employer yet to bad mouth.

However, I have, indirectly, without saying names, bad mouthed some employees at previous places while blogging. That's half the fun though :)

These companies who are so worried about what people say on blogs, should just damn well make a better company - make a better product, and treat your employees better. ;)

 

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