The Consequential Value Of Technology

Science & technology are heading our life today. Every individual is surrounded by new techniques in everyday life. Modern technology has made our life easy and meaningful.

An assemblage of techniques or skills used to change or manipulate human life is called technology. From cell phones to major diagnostic tools & equipments, technology is everywhere. Everyday life is made easy with technological advancement. Technology has helped in developing economics and entertainment.

The meaning of technology has changed in past 200 years. Earlier, before 20th century, technology referred to useful arts or industrial art only. Now, the meaning of technology has extended to collection of techniques and skills. According to American Sociologist Read Bain "technology includes all tools, techniques, machines, utensils, instruments, war weapons, housing, clothing, communicating and transporting devices and the skills by which we produce and use them." All entities, both material and immaterial, wherein mental and physical efforts deployed to gain some use or value is called Technology.

Eminence

Technology is an essential of everyone's life. All countries, all individuals achieved a lot with the help of technology. Technology has given more freedom and options to people in everything. People have become more efficient with more methods and discoveries. Technology has made an impact on everything.

Technology should be considered as favourable advancement? Well, with easy daily life and benefits, undoubtedly it has some negative impacts too which does question human existence.

1. Technology Advancement In Healthcare: Technology has changed the complete healthcare system. The most admirable benefit of technology in healthcare is doctors can discover more health issues at early stage and cure them. A person sitting in one country can communicate with doctor in another country. Long waiting hours for doctor's appointment is minimized. We do not need to carry a bundle of hand written records as everything get recorded in CDs and memory chips. Mobile health has come into picture which helps many patients to keep daily health check. People can communicate and correspond with health suppliers remotely. Applications like Apple Face Time and Microsoft Skype permits patient to have practical doctor's visit at home even in remote areas. Through electronic advanced records, doctors can share laboratory results with patient.
2. Technology Advantages In Daily Life: Invention of solar powered devices in household and official chores is a bliss. Use of solar powered lantern and other devices is very beneficial as it is natural and save environment from harmful effects of gases like carbon dioxide and methane. Artificial Intelligence and it's inventions has made many kinds of official and household work robotic which need zero human intervention.
3. Technology Benefits In Business: With the rapid trade growth, companies produce and launch new products to market easily. For international success, companies make management to cut down waste products and also reduction of time and cost in product development. Modern professional standards drive work places to provide standardize work culture that boost employees psychologically. Advanced infrastructure effects culture, efficiency and relations of the business.
4. Technology Advancement In Corporate Management And Operations: Technology has benefited companies to manage operations at large extent. Companies cut down cost in business revision processes and eliminate non value add actions that does not benefit customers. Companies new focus on projects that helps development of innovative products and also to generate great revenue.
5. Technology Allows Multitasking: Another benefit of technology is that it permits multitasking through computers. With one device, a person can run different programs simultaneously. Few programs which are used to perform complex calculations can run on the computer and are very useful for statistical analysis. Math equations can be easily done quickly and accurately.
6. Technology Advantages In Administration: A corporate's administration get huge benefits from technology tools. Technology permits organisation to eliminate repetition of functions and outsourcing marketing and management functions.
7. Technology In Business Centralization: Technology advancement helps purchasing and logistic get centralized. It also helps in cost reduction. Companies and business owners can take decisions as per rapid change in local markets. The systems are more integrated now because of technology growth.

We cannot imagine our world without cellphone and laptop. Technology, undoubtedly, amplifies human efforts, however, it has certain risks and disadvantages too. The foremost disadvantage is decline of human capital which increased the chances of unemployment. For example, the use of calculator and statistical software eliminate the use of human mind in corporate sector and in businesses too. Technological advancement reduced the need of human effort to a large extent.

Limitations

There are risks and crucial impacts involved with this technological advancement.

• Huge Expense: Now a days, because of technology development, a student does not need to depend on paper and pen only. Hi-tech machines in education are in use and to maintain them is quite expensive. A business owner or corporate who owns such software need to spend a lot to update them timely.
• Disadvantages in Education: If we talk about current education system, all the teachers are significantly trained with advancement of modern machines. Most of them are just utilizing technology instead of gaining sufficient knowledge. Most of the teaching syllabus are conveniently available online and accessible. This advancement make students inactive in class sessions. These hi-tech machines are not error free. There are server errors which take lot of time to troubleshoot. This waste a lot of valuable time of school administration. Sometimes websites are keen to keep their web link on top and they use tactics to spread information. This may misled to user to is reading the content. Technology keep coming up new development and challenges. Complete school staff cannot keep up with the changing technology trends. This sudden change sometimes become difficult to execute in the correct direction. Important stuff for students and learners are now composed in gadgets and e-books. These gadgets and e-books are not compatible with all devices as the laptop should have e-book reader to access it.
• Access To Unethical Content: The major concern with the advancement of technology is that pornographic and other inappropriate material is easily accessible. This leads to distraction. Students become more likely lack in focus.
• Incorrect Direction: Another drawback of technology is incorrect direction of youth as people get so much attached to access of cell phones and their laptop screens which sometimes is a cause of rise of social issues. It effects the psychology of the people too as they feel social anxiety when it comes to real face to face interaction.
• Cyber Crime: Data theft and cyber bullying are unethical activities which specifically effect youngsters as they do not have appropriate knowledge about it. Youth have an easy access to innumerable accounts that make them enter into harassment and they cannot find exit at times.
• Complexity: All do not understand the functioning of technical devices and machines that we use on daily basis. For example, carrying and using an iPhone involves handling complex settings. Minor defects in laptop does cause time and expense both.
• Social Depersonalization: Society is becoming more and more dependable on machines as these digital machines replace human intervention. People does shopping, banking, online bill payments. These activities are increasing online.
• Advancement Of War Weapons and Human Existence: Technology advancement has made weapon deployment easy without presence or intervention of armed forces. War can be turned into a computer game by the use of drones. Invention of missile and bomber fighter jets, latest earth and water weapons is a question to human existence if a war get commenced.
• Overload Of Worktasks: Employees of modern companies spend lot of their time to keep up with abundance of emails they receive every week, some of them need reply and some need immediate action. Organizing a huge amount of data acquired in some professions such as training videos, photograph, reports is very challenging.
• Digital Sources Manipulation: Digital media such as audio, video, photograph are easy to edit. To know the difference between real and fake is very difficult now.

Epilogue

We all agree with the betterment of our life with technology advancement. If technology is well applied, it benefits human as well as environment. It creates more efficient learning environment for youth in many ways. Excess use of technology and it's effects is a prime concern for psychological health professionals now. With it's advancement and benefits, we should also focus on it's healthy and limited use as technology development unquestionably leads to nation development.