Chronicle

The PASCAL ChronicleIBIs the rise of technology a blessing or a curse?Living in the 21 st century means that every day you come across surprises in the area oftechnology. Technical development can be described as one of the most powerful forces inour society, allowing us to change everything around us. Nothing has remained as it was;even humans have changed as a consequence of the rise of technology over the last century.We have become obsessed with perfection, wanting to be God. So, along with thebenefits of new technology, there are also some concerns which, in my opinion, exceedthose things which make it appear as a blessing.The boost in technology has caused enough damage to mankind by destroying simple living. For instance, the use ofsophisticated electronic machines for our everyday jobs such as the vacuum cleaner or the microwave as a result has madepeople become lazier day after day. This means that people will probably become anti-social and unskilled since work that theyused to do every day and skills that have been developed are no longer useful because technology can do them for you. Also,being exposed to all these machines all the time and everywhere has caused damage to our health.Even if multitasking machines have released our hands and made our life easier and lazier, they have at the sametime put our health in danger. All machines have a magnetic and electrical field around them which you cannot avoid. Thesemagnetic fields have caused an increase in the cancer cases. Then, in order to treat the cancer, radioactivity is used. However,even though cancer cells can be killed, healthy ones can also be destroyed. This means that technology was both the one inthe first place that increased the cases of cancer and the one needed for treatment even though it can have negative impact onthe patient too. Like for example, every time a patient is exposed to x-rays its body stores radiation which in years can bedeadly for the person.In addition, another issue found in the area of medicine is genetic modification. For example, people who have anobsession with perfection want to decide on the appearance of their baby before it’s born. By changing the genome of the embryoa parent can do cosmetic modification and decide on the colour of hair and eyes of a baby. In my opinion, this is againstnature and gives me the impression that those people are trying to replace God since they don’t want anything to be left tonature but be controlled by them. Therefore, we are now living in a society of selfish people with no ethics.Apart from the area of medicine and society, technology can also affect the area of education. Some people believethat the use of the Internet will benefit pupils because of the wide range of information found on the net for research. However,this is as not important as avoiding situations where students become addicted and used to learning the easy way orwanting everything to be ready for them by the teacher which also may lead to the concern of plagiarism. Thus, the challengeof technology is teaching students to have proper evaluation skills. Otherwise, technology could become a curse for education.In conclusion, problems such as de-humanization, gene-modification and plagiarism and not taking into account theethical implications of our actions position the rise in technology as a curse. This means that ifwe are not careful we may even reach a point where machines will take decisions for our livesor actually replace us.Maria Kountouri 6IB40