The Two Sides Of Technology...

"Technology is a gift of God. After the gift of life it is perhaps the greatest of God's gifts. It is the mother of civilizations, of arts and of sciences."

Technology refers to the collection of tools, including machinery, modifications, arrangements and procedures used by humans. The human species' use of technology began with the conversion of natural resources into simple tools. Recent technological developments, including the printing press, the telephone, and the internet, have lessened physical barriers to communication and allowed humans to interact freely on a global scale. However, not all technology has been used for peaceful purposes; the development of weapons of ever-increasing destructive power has progressed throughout history, from clubs to nuclear weapons.

Technology has affected society and its surroundings in a number of ways. In many societies, technology has helped develop more advanced economies (including today's global economy) and has allowed the rise of a leisure class. 

The word "technology" can also be used to refer to a collection of techniques. In this context, it is the current state of humanity's knowledge of how to combine resources to produce desired products, to solve problems, fulfill needs, or satisfy wants; it includes technical methods, skills, processes, techniques, tools and raw materials.

It would be ungrateful on our part not to recognize how immense the boons are which modern technology has given to mankind. Can we think about living without computers, mobile phones, electricity or modern methods of publishing? We all know the impact of technology in medical science & education system on us.

Technology has made our life easy, comfortable, simple and luxurious. Technology is supporting human so much that now a person can work from his home. It has helped a lot in uniting people. In fact with the help of internet the world has just turned in to a global village. Yes, technology & scientific invention has its disadvantages also. A car is a wonderful gift of technology to mankind. But a reckless driver is capable of using it as a weapon of destruction. Television is a mean of instruction & entertaining people but it is often used as a channel false propaganda. Atomic energy provides a number of wonderful uses to mankind. But again, certain destructive minds plan to use atomic energy for destructive purpose.

"The number one benefit of information technology is that it empowers people to do what they want to do. It lets people be creative. It lets people be productive. It lets people learn things they didn't think they could learn before, and so in a sense it is all about potential."

But as they say a coin has two side to it, so does technology. It too has a good and a bad side to it. 

Good Side Of Technology

We cannot forget that technology has been a great help to us in the last decade. It has undergone a huge change in the last 10 years. It has advanced leaps and bounds. 

The sandals that are made with the help of machines.

I happen to talk to one person in Udupi who says that technology has really helped him in his business. Meet Mr.Rajan Rengnath, a shoe shop owner. He says that due to recent development in technology he is able to sell more shoes than his father was able to back in his time. He says that most of the shoes that are made today are machine made and because of that reason he is able to make more amount of money than before. 

Due to this even the middle-men are also eliminated and no extra cost is gone in taking such services. He says that even the workers are paid good enough money. The tedious job is left for the machines to perform but obviously with some help of the workers.

But not everything is rosy as it seems to be. He even told us the flip-side of it.

Bad Side Of Technology

"Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards."

Even though it helps him to produce more number of shoes in one go, but all is not good for him in this business.

According to him, even though the machine does most of the work there are times when the machine are of not much use to them. In fact all the 'shinny beads' that we want or see on our shoes are done hand made. It takes about 1 hr for the workers to finish one pair of those shoes!!!! 

He says that due to this it takes up a lot of time of the workers in doing that particular work only. He also said that as these days people want hand made shoes, so they have to put in a lot of efforts to make sure that they can present a good hand made shoe to the costumers. Sometimes costumers want custom made shoes so they have to do everything by hand for them. 

The beads are put by the workers themselves.

Sometimes even in the machine made shoes, the machine is not able to make the right kind of shoes so they have to make everything on their own. 

At times the machine is not able to detect the fault in the shoes that are made. So the workers have to hand pick all the shoes and check all of them on their own one by one. It leads to a lot of time being wasted in this process. 

The only constant is change. So when time for technology came, it came for a change and like every other change it has brought with it its pie of pros and cons. Technology has made life easy. It changed our way of thinking. Now we can imagine of having our morning tea atNew York, lunch at New Delhi and dinner with some alien on Moon.

If we at all wish to quantify the cons of technology, we will end up with just our own flaws. Because it is mankind himself who has developed these things of benefit and later started misusing the same.

Let us be ready for the next change! 

 So on which side are you????