Is technology as good as it seems in the world today?

In this 21st century, the age of technology have came and swept across the world in the waves of tsunami. Now, people in urban areas, regardless of rich or poor, inevitably find their lives closely intertwined with technology, be it in the form of mobile phones, computers or music players. It hooks onto the masses as if a widespread addiction had occurred, with people undergoing symptoms similar to those of drug withdrawn symptoms whenever they lose contact with technology.

However behind its beautiful facade, is a side of negativity of the technology we have at our fingertips, which people tend to be oblivious to; firstly, as stated above, technology may prove to become a drug-like entity, causing addiction among users. Next would be the ineffectiveness of information transfer and not forgetting the impacts of technology on our world.

First of all, the problem of game addiction is widespread, especially in countries like the United States and Japan, where technology advances very rapidly as compared to other countries. These game addictions are mainly associated with computers, be it arcade game machines or home computers, and there has been reported cases of people playing computers non-stop for several days, neglecting the fatigue of their mind and bodies and demand for energy. These cases eventually ended in these addicts losing either their lives or sanity.

As the saying goes, “there will always be two sides to a coin”. Thus when people say that information can be disseminated very fast with technology, there would be loopholes in the system that people overlook. A simple example would be the jamming of networks on major festive occasions like the Chinese New Year, when people send festive greetings in the forms of MMS or SMS. Another example would be the recent mass murder in Virginia Tech University. On the day of the shooting, alert messages that would have averted the disaster was sent out. However due to network failure, the message came too late at 9.50am, where students and tutors had already started lessons and was not able to check their mails over either the internet or Blackberrys, thus resulting in the massacre becoming reality. This is undoubtedly an ironic twist to all the tribute paid to the goodness and effectiveness of technology.

Regardless of anyone’s rebuttal, the undeniable bitter truth of technology is that it has impacted our world to a large extent. Take into view the American society; Due to the emphasis on human rights, the American youths can easily gain access to violent materials which are not suitable for their age. In this sense, there has been increasing proportions of aggressive youths in the population, resulting in more home violence and crimes committed by youths.

Thus I urge people out there to try and see the two sides of technology and understand that we should not rely too much on technology as it is not all good and as reliable as portrayed in the façade of technology we see.