Is technology making lives easier for us?

We are living in a time of exciting and rapid revolutionary changes in the world. The use of modern inventions like cell phones, TV and Internet has become common in our lives. For mostof us, life without these inventions is a nightmare. As the society progresses, technology is becoming more and more advanced. Most people would think that technology has made their lives easier for them and consider it as a blessing. However, from my point of view, technologyhas done quite the opposite. While considering technology from the usability point of view,various social and economical effects of technology need to be considered.Technology has made lives easier and quicker but dangerous as well. Taking in considerationsome of the modern daily life inventions such as internet helping us to get information faster andallowing us to stay connected with friends and family, microwave helping us cook faster or theTV allowing us to watch a number of different channels might seem to us as making our liveseasier and efficient but having a look at the other side of the mirror exposes some shocking truthsas well. There have been a lot of incidents where a malfunction or a technical error caused moredamage than benefit. Technology creates financial problems in families because mosttechnologies are very expensive to buy. Take the example of a television. In old times, a simpleTV had two dials – a volume control and a channel changer. On the contrary, in modern times, if you need to have a TV, one always looks for something with extra add-ons and features such as asatellite receiver and a DVD player. People long for those days when they used to have a familygathering where they had a chat with each other and discussed their problems. Now-a-days, allwe care about is checking our emails and text messages without the true emotional bond andrelationship with each other.

Modern technology has taken away comfort from our lives and has introduced a new term“stress” in our lives. In presence of modern technology, when exactly we rest and allow our minds to turn off for a while? It has made things harder for us and distracted us. It feels likemachines own the world now-a-days. It is just an artificial enhancement of human powers. Nuclear power has terrified and paralyzed its creators while machines have caused social chaosand economic stagnation. People are getting unfit, less social and more frustrated. People rely oncars and vehicles to travel small distances and hardly do any exercise which makes them morevulnerable to diseases. People spend less time developing cooking skills and thus don’t get tochoose the best of food and therefore are deprived of eating healthy food. They spend the wholeday isolated in front of computers and televisions wrecking their social lives.Just think of the various poisonous gases that are ruining our environment posing a threat tohuman mankind as well as Mother Nature. People spend a lot of time using internet but hardlyapply any of the information gained to the real world. According to a survey, a growing number of working women are suffering from burnout as a result of trying to balance work and homecommitments. Seven out of ten women said that the advent of mobile phones and email onlymade their lives worse, leaving chaos and suffering in their lives. More than one in tencomplained that having their mobile phone meant that their life was no longer their own and thathaving a mobile meant their employer regularly called them with out-of-hours work queries.Kids are growing more violent and are having low academic achievements all because of their addictive games on Xboxes, Play Stations etc. The growing technology also has damagingeffects in adults as well. In the business world more and more machinery and computers aretaking over our jobs. This ultimately means that as technology grows, more and more jobs will be lost which might lead to a high level of unemployment.