Tag: #efficiency

The most impactful line, in my opinion, from “What is Technology” by Stephen J. Kline was, “However, we humans are the only species that purposefully makes innovations in our sociotechnical systems in order to (hopefully) improve their functioning.” The idea that we as humans create new technologies for the purpose of ease and a better everyday life doesn’t agree with me. So often new tech designed for good has turned on humanity as a whole and the argument could be made that without these emerging technologies we would all be better off. No one would argue that life in the 21st century is vastly more efficient than it was even 50 years ago, but what we’ve traded for that efficiency is personal privacy and safety. Kline uses the example of the atom bomb as a manufactured article of technology designed to oppress and protect. Consequently, new technologies are very easily duplicated and within a matter of years there were enough nuclear grade weapons to wipe out the entire species, let alone all species. In this case technology wasn’t necessarily created with the best intentions and definitely did not grow into a better situation. Less obvious, but just as impactful, technologies such as those in medicine. New drugs have cured diseases and prevented plagues, but on the other end of that highly addictive drugs like heroin and methamphetamine were once regulated and distributed by pharmaceutical companies. Today the epidemic of addiction is a very real problem that quite possibly would not have gained as much speed without as much push for new and better technologies. On a less life threatening, but a more widespread note, technology in the form of new forms of communication and the existence of the internet remove a lot of previously assumed privacy. Susceptibility to hacking and selling if data to government agencies tracking worrisome search history is a new and seemingly impossible problem to fix. In this day and age are enough technologies being created for and staying good?