Technology: Is It a Blessing or a Curse?

We live in a technologically advanced age. Gone are the days when transport was scarce and very difficult, when children had to walk miles to and from school and communication with family and loved ones was only through letters. With modern technology, we have advanced from faxes to e-mail and bicycles to cars and planes. Yet out of every positive that arises from such advancement, there are various negatives.

Before this new age, people were forced to count, multiply and divide using their brain. Now, advanced scientific calculators do most of the work, which has proven not to be a blessing as more and more youth are failing Mathematics. Young people are also straying further from reading a good book and would rather play videogames or watch television, which can be to the detriment of, not only their grades, but that of their overall health, as evidenced by the increasing number of children wearing eye glasses. On the positive side, technology has led to the discovery of new treatments in previously untreatable diseases like diabetes and sickle cell anemia, where patients would remain in medical institutions for months with little to no hope for a better life. Such developments have brought a new lease on life for so many people who previously looked at such diseases as a death sentence. However, with all the positive implications that technology has made health-wise, it has been said that radiation emitted from cell phones and CRT monitors are directly related to the increasing number of cancer cases worldwide.

There is also the issue of increasing unemployment due to the implementation of new technology in the workforce. It has been shown that mechanization makes work easier, cheaper, and more efficient, hence the reasoning behind business owners taking such a route. But many, on the other hand, believe that when the technology is stabilized at a high enough level, the unemployment rate will begin to decrease as people will be hired to work on or with the machines. So, it can be surmised, that while new technology may create an immediate rise in unemployment, it may not affect joblessness in the long run.

Although the internet has proven to be the quickest means of acquiring, processing and disseminating information, which is admittedly a plus, it is more often than not used as an avenue to expose otherwise unsullied individuals to a life of depravity and sin. Pornography, online prostitution and web-based gambling are just some of the immoral acts being practised on the World Wide Web. We are also entrapped and tangled in a web of technological miscreants, resulting in the increasing number of cyber crimes such as identity thefts, piracy, fraud and malicious hacking. Some young people even use the internet as a means of cheating in research papers and assignments; simply copying what is found online without any of their own input. Although this may seem to be a positive from the student's perspective,