How Advancing Technologies is Both our Savior and our Doom
By: iGageit (Medium)
The human factor still prevails.
Technology is amoral, apolitical, and apathetic. Technology only amplifies the good, bad, and ugly of humanity.
Humans are still in charge. Whether technology is savior or doom remains entirely an human choice.
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
You may remember this quote:
Anna: What's that thing you say, Olaf?
Olaf: The thing… Oh! My theory about advancing technologies as both our savior and our doom?
What did Olaf mean? What does this REALLY mean?
How Advancing Technology could be our savior
Thanks to Marvin Meyer for sharing their work on Unsplash.
New growing technology has been a huge benefit in the world helping millions of people with thousands of different areas of life. From giving education to those with no access to a school to learning about how to heal sicknesses that would have killed millions a few hundred years ago.
Technology has given us the ability to communicate with anyone in the world in seconds. We can voice our opinions and anyone can speak the truth about an issue without needing approval from news media.
With our smartphones we can stay connected to our loved ones, we can keep track of our fitness and see the progression we make each day, we can motivate ourselves with music from any artist we enjoy.
With Technology growing at such a rapid pace we can foresee a wonderful future. A beautiful future full of automated smart cars, augmented reality, AI, robots doing our will, Smart cities, and everyone being together digitally.
Technology promises us a future where all our problems will someday be solved with computers, Going to an office to work will be a thing of the past, and robots directed by AI will do as we command and sicknesses will be cured.
All of this sounds amazing. Yes, Technology has come a long way and has helped millions of people. But with all of this technology is flawed because there are people involved…
How Advancing Technology could be our DOOM
As long as there are people involved, there will always be a dark side to technology. Tech Companies need to make money so they need to do things to continue the flow of money.
Take Google for instance. Google is a wonderful tool that millions use every day to do amazing things. Google is free for users to use… Well, it doesn't cost any physical money to use. Google makes its money by tracking what you do in order to send you personalized ads. Google is not the only company to do this. Facebook is also very guilty of doing this also.
Many companies will take the email you give them and sell them to the ad companies so they can send you ads based on where you live or your buying habits.
Just like there is a Light Side and a Dark Side of the Force, there is a light side of technology and a Dark side.
Technology allows people to abuse and cyberbully others while hiding behind a screen and free from punishment. The internet has given voices to many who are not responsible enough to use it and instead spread fear and confusion.
Take Covid-19, If the news media hadn't sown panic into the world then we would have handled the pandemic a lot wiser. Then we quickly forgot about the virus as soon as black lives were the topic of argument.
People are so willing to believe everything they read online without checking the sources or the research and believing its all true.
If we continue on this path of spreading lies and hate on the internet. We will not stand.
Technology is also eating up our world. We need power for our technologies to work and until we go 100% green we are destroying the earth to make our phones and cars work.
If we do not make changes to how we are using our advancing technologies, we are almost certainly going to be doomed by it.
The Next Step
All this talk about how technology can destroy the world shouldn't make you panic and never use technology again, But it should make you realize that even though our technology is a very good and useful thing we need to understand how to use it wisely.
There will always be cyberbullies and companies using technology to their own evil advantage. But you use technology for good.
Don't spread everything you have seen on social media until you know the facts.
If you work for one of the giant tech companies that use people's information to make money, please be transparent with those who use your product and allow them to easily limit how much you keep track of them. Privacy is one of peoples most valuable possessions.
If we all work together, we can make a new world full of wonderful technology that will be good for us all.
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A stone can be used as a pestle to grind grain. A stone can be used to crack a skull like a walnut. The stone hasn't done a damned thing.
Technology as savior or doom is entirely a human choice. Instead of focusing attention on technology, we need to pay more attention to the human factor.