essay technology in our lives

Feb 13, 2023

200-500 Word Example Essays about Technology

Got an essay assignment about technology check out these examples to inspire you.

Technology is a rapidly evolving field that has completely changed the way we live, work, and interact with one another. Technology has profoundly impacted our daily lives, from how we communicate with friends and family to how we access information and complete tasks. As a result, it's no surprise that technology is a popular topic for students writing essays.

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This blog post aims to provide readers with various example essays on technology, all generated by Jenni.ai. These essays will be a valuable resource for students looking for inspiration or guidance as they work on their essays. By reading through these example essays, students can better understand how technology can be approached and discussed in an essay.

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The Impact of Technology on Society and Culture

Introduction:.

Technology has become an integral part of our daily lives and has dramatically impacted how we interact, communicate, and carry out various activities. Technological advancements have brought positive and negative changes to society and culture. In this article, we will explore the impact of technology on society and culture and how it has influenced different aspects of our lives.

Positive impact on communication:

Technology has dramatically improved communication and made it easier for people to connect from anywhere in the world. Social media platforms, instant messaging, and video conferencing have brought people closer, bridging geographical distances and cultural differences. This has made it easier for people to share information, exchange ideas, and collaborate on projects.

Positive impact on education:

Students and instructors now have access to a multitude of knowledge and resources because of the effect of technology on education . Students may now study at their speed and from any location thanks to online learning platforms, educational applications, and digital textbooks.

Negative impact on critical thinking and creativity:

Technological advancements have resulted in a reduction in critical thinking and creativity. With so much information at our fingertips, individuals have become more passive in their learning, relying on the internet for solutions rather than logic and inventiveness. As a result, independent thinking and problem-solving abilities have declined.

Positive impact on entertainment:

Technology has transformed how we access and consume entertainment. People may now access a wide range of entertainment alternatives from the comfort of their own homes thanks to streaming services, gaming platforms, and online content makers. The entertainment business has entered a new age of creativity and invention as a result of this.

Negative impact on attention span:

However, the continual bombardment of information and technological stimulation has also reduced attention span and the capacity to focus. People are easily distracted and need help focusing on a single activity for a long time. This has hampered productivity and the ability to accomplish duties.

The Ethics of Artificial Intelligence And Machine Learning

The development of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) technologies has been one of the most significant technological developments of the past several decades. These cutting-edge technologies have the potential to alter several sectors of society, including commerce, industry, healthcare, and entertainment. 

As with any new and quickly advancing technology, AI and ML ethics must be carefully studied. The usage of these technologies presents significant concerns around privacy, accountability, and command. As the use of AI and ML grows more ubiquitous, we must assess their possible influence on society and investigate the ethical issues that must be taken into account as these technologies continue to develop.

What are Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning?

Artificial Intelligence is the simulation of human intelligence in machines designed to think and act like humans. Machine learning is a subfield of AI that enables computers to learn from data and improve their performance over time without being explicitly programmed.

The impact of AI and ML on Society

The use of AI and ML in various industries, such as healthcare, finance, and retail, has brought many benefits. For example, AI-powered medical diagnosis systems can identify diseases faster and more accurately than human doctors. However, there are also concerns about job displacement and the potential for AI to perpetuate societal biases.

The Ethical Considerations of AI and ML

A. Bias in AI algorithms

One of the critical ethical concerns about AI and ML is the potential for algorithms to perpetuate existing biases. This can occur if the data used to train these algorithms reflects the preferences of the people who created it. As a result, AI systems can perpetuate these biases and discriminate against certain groups of people.

B. Responsibility for AI-generated decisions

Another ethical concern is the responsibility for decisions made by AI systems. For example, who is responsible for the damage if a self-driving car causes an accident? The manufacturer of the vehicle, the software developer, or the AI algorithm itself?

C. The potential for misuse of AI and ML

AI and ML can also be used for malicious purposes, such as cyberattacks and misinformation. The need for more regulation and oversight in developing and using these technologies makes it difficult to prevent misuse.

The developments in AI and ML have given numerous benefits to humanity, but they also present significant ethical concerns that must be addressed. We must assess the repercussions of new technologies on society, implement methods to limit the associated dangers, and guarantee that they are utilized for the greater good. As AI and ML continue to play an ever-increasing role in our daily lives, we must engage in an open and frank discussion regarding their ethics.

The Future of Work And Automation

Rapid technological breakthroughs in recent years have brought about considerable changes in our way of life and work. Concerns regarding the influence of artificial intelligence and machine learning on the future of work and employment have increased alongside the development of these technologies. This article will examine the possible advantages and disadvantages of automation and its influence on the labor market, employees, and the economy.

The Advantages of Automation

Automation in the workplace offers various benefits, including higher efficiency and production, fewer mistakes, and enhanced precision. Automated processes may accomplish repetitive jobs quickly and precisely, allowing employees to concentrate on more complex and creative activities. Additionally, automation may save organizations money since it removes the need to pay for labor and minimizes the danger of workplace accidents.

The Potential Disadvantages of Automation

However, automation has significant disadvantages, including job loss and income stagnation. As robots and computers replace human labor in particular industries, there is a danger that many workers may lose their jobs, resulting in higher unemployment and more significant economic disparity. Moreover, if automation is not adequately regulated and managed, it might lead to stagnant wages and a deterioration in employees' standard of life.

The Future of Work and Automation

Despite these difficulties, automation will likely influence how labor is done. As a result, firms, employees, and governments must take early measures to solve possible issues and reap the rewards of automation. This might entail funding worker retraining programs, enhancing education and skill development, and implementing regulations that support equality and justice at work.

IV. The Need for Ethical Considerations

We must consider the ethical ramifications of automation and its effects on society as technology develops. The impact on employees and their rights, possible hazards to privacy and security, and the duty of corporations and governments to ensure that automation is utilized responsibly and ethically are all factors to be taken into account.

Conclusion:

To summarise, the future of employment and automation will most certainly be defined by a complex interaction of technological advances, economic trends, and cultural ideals. All stakeholders must work together to handle the problems and possibilities presented by automation and ensure that technology is employed to benefit society as a whole.

The Role of Technology in Education

Introduction.

Nearly every part of our lives has been transformed by technology, and education is no different. Today's students have greater access to knowledge, opportunities, and resources than ever before, and technology is becoming a more significant part of their educational experience. Technology is transforming how we think about education and creating new opportunities for learners of all ages, from online courses and virtual classrooms to instructional applications and augmented reality.

Technology's Benefits for Education

The capacity to tailor learning is one of technology's most significant benefits in education. Students may customize their education to meet their unique needs and interests since they can access online information and tools. 

For instance, people can enroll in online classes on topics they are interested in, get tailored feedback on their work, and engage in virtual discussions with peers and subject matter experts worldwide. As a result, pupils are better able to acquire and develop the abilities and information necessary for success.

Challenges and Concerns

Despite the numerous advantages of technology in education, there are also obstacles and considerations to consider. One issue is the growing reliance on technology and the possibility that pupils would become overly dependent on it. This might result in a lack of critical thinking and problem-solving abilities, as students may become passive learners who only follow instructions and rely on technology to complete their assignments.

Another obstacle is the digital divide between those who have access to technology and those who do not. This division can exacerbate the achievement gap between pupils and produce uneven educational and professional growth chances. To reduce these consequences, all students must have access to the technology and resources necessary for success.

In conclusion, technology is rapidly becoming an integral part of the classroom experience and has the potential to alter the way we learn radically. 

Technology can help students flourish and realize their full potential by giving them access to individualized instruction, tools, and opportunities. While the benefits of technology in the classroom are undeniable, it's crucial to be mindful of the risks and take precautions to guarantee that all kids have access to the tools they need to thrive.

The Influence of Technology On Personal Relationships And Communication 

Technological advancements have profoundly altered how individuals connect and exchange information. It has changed the world in many ways in only a few decades. Because of the rise of the internet and various social media sites, maintaining relationships with people from all walks of life is now simpler than ever. 

However, concerns about how these developments may affect interpersonal connections and dialogue are inevitable in an era of rapid technological growth. In this piece, we'll discuss how the prevalence of digital media has altered our interpersonal connections and the language we use to express ourselves.

Direct Effect on Direct Interaction:

The disruption of face-to-face communication is a particularly stark example of how technology has impacted human connections. The quality of interpersonal connections has suffered due to people's growing preference for digital over human communication. Technology has been demonstrated to reduce the usage of nonverbal signs such as facial expressions, tone of voice, and other indicators of emotional investment in the connection.

Positive Impact on Long-Distance Relationships:

Yet there are positives to be found as well. Long-distance relationships have also benefited from technological advancements. The development of technologies such as video conferencing, instant messaging, and social media has made it possible for individuals to keep in touch with distant loved ones. It has become simpler for individuals to stay in touch and feel connected despite geographical distance.

The Effects of Social Media on Personal Connections:

The widespread use of social media has had far-reaching consequences, especially on the quality of interpersonal interactions. Social media has positive and harmful effects on relationships since it allows people to keep in touch and share life's milestones.

Unfortunately, social media has made it all too easy to compare oneself to others, which may lead to emotions of jealousy and a general decline in confidence. Furthermore, social media might cause people to have inflated expectations of themselves and their relationships.

A Personal Perspective on the Intersection of Technology and Romance

Technological advancements have also altered physical touch and closeness. Virtual reality and other technologies have allowed people to feel physical contact and familiarity in a digital setting. This might be a promising breakthrough, but it has some potential downsides. 

Experts are concerned that people's growing dependence on technology for intimacy may lead to less time spent communicating face-to-face and less emphasis on physical contact, both of which are important for maintaining good relationships.

In conclusion, technological advancements have significantly affected the quality of interpersonal connections and the exchange of information. Even though technology has made it simpler to maintain personal relationships, it has chilled interpersonal interactions between people. 

Keeping tabs on how technology is changing our lives and making adjustments as necessary is essential as we move forward. Boundaries and prioritizing in-person conversation and physical touch in close relationships may help reduce the harm it causes.

The Security and Privacy Implications of Increased Technology Use and Data Collection

The fast development of technology over the past few decades has made its way into every aspect of our life. Technology has improved many facets of our life, from communication to commerce. However, significant privacy and security problems have emerged due to the broad adoption of technology. In this essay, we'll look at how the widespread use of technological solutions and the subsequent explosion in collected data affects our right to privacy and security.

Data Mining and Privacy Concerns

Risk of Cyber Attacks and Data Loss

The Widespread Use of Encryption and Other Safety Mechanisms

The Privacy and Security of the Future in a Globalized Information Age

Obtaining and Using Individual Information

The acquisition and use of private information is a significant cause for privacy alarm in the digital age. Data about their customers' online habits, interests, and personal information is a valuable commodity for many internet firms. Besides tailored advertising, this information may be used for other, less desirable things like identity theft or cyber assaults.

Moreover, many individuals need to be made aware of what data is being gathered from them or how it is being utilized because of the lack of transparency around gathering personal information. Privacy and data security have become increasingly contentious as a result.

Data breaches and other forms of cyber-attack pose a severe risk.

The risk of cyber assaults and data breaches is another big issue of worry. More people are using more devices, which means more opportunities for cybercriminals to steal private information like credit card numbers and other identifying data. This may cause monetary damages and harm one's reputation or identity.

Many high-profile data breaches have occurred in recent years, exposing the personal information of millions of individuals and raising serious concerns about the safety of this information. Companies and governments have responded to this problem by adopting new security methods like encryption and multi-factor authentication.

Many businesses now use encryption and other security measures to protect themselves from cybercriminals and data thieves. Encryption keeps sensitive information hidden by encoding it so that only those possessing the corresponding key can decipher it. This prevents private information like bank account numbers or social security numbers from falling into the wrong hands.

Firewalls, virus scanners, and two-factor authentication are all additional security precautions that may be used with encryption. While these safeguards do much to stave against cyber assaults, they are not entirely impregnable, and data breaches are still possible.

The Future of Privacy and Security in a Technologically Advanced World

There's little doubt that concerns about privacy and security will persist even as technology improves. There must be strict safeguards to secure people's private information as more and more of it is transferred and kept digitally. To achieve this goal, it may be necessary to implement novel technologies and heightened levels of protection and to revise the rules and regulations regulating the collection and storage of private information.

Individuals and businesses are understandably concerned about the security and privacy consequences of widespread technological use and data collecting. There are numerous obstacles to overcome in a society where technology plays an increasingly important role, from acquiring and using personal data to the risk of cyber-attacks and data breaches. Companies and governments must keep spending money on security measures and working to educate people about the significance of privacy and security if personal data is to remain safe.

In conclusion, technology has profoundly impacted virtually every aspect of our lives, including society and culture, ethics, work, education, personal relationships, and security and privacy. The rise of artificial intelligence and machine learning has presented new ethical considerations, while automation is transforming the future of work. 

In education, technology has revolutionized the way we learn and access information. At the same time, our dependence on technology has brought new challenges in terms of personal relationships, communication, security, and privacy.

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Home — Essay Samples — Information Science and Technology — Disadvantages of Technology — The Impact of Technology on Our Lives

The Impact of Technology on Our Lives

• Categories: Disadvantages of Technology Impact of Technology

About this sample

Words: 799 |

Published: Jan 29, 2024

Words: 799 | Pages: 2 | 4 min read

Table of contents

Impact on communication, effects on education, influence on work and productivity, influence on health and well-being, impact on society.

• Anderson, M., & Perrin, A. (2017, May 19). Tech Adoption Climbs Among Older Adults. Pew Research Center - Internet and Technology. https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2017/05/17/technology-use-among-seniors/
• Brown, A. E., & Tiggemann, M. (2016). Attractive celebrity and peer images on Instagram: Effect on women’s mood and body image. Body Image, 19, 37-43. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bodyim.2016.09.008
• Chen, Q., Liang, Y., & Deng, C. (2019). The effects of WeChat use on mental health among college students in China. Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, 22(12), 724-730. https://doi.org/10.1089/cyber.2019.0216
• Kim, L. E., & Caine, K. E. (2014). Help-seeking behavior in the context of suicidal ideation: A study of Facebook users. Journal of Affective Disorders, 155, 49-53. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jad.2013.10.043

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Technology to defeat Ebola

Mathematics for a sustainable world, openmind books, scientific anniversaries, what is the purpose of music, featured author, latest book, how the internet has changed everyday life, what happened.

The Internet has turned our existence upside down. It has revolutionized communications, to the extent that it is now our preferred medium of everyday communication. In almost everything we do, we use the Internet. Ordering a pizza, buying a television, sharing a moment with a friend, sending a picture over instant messaging. Before the Internet, if you wanted to keep up with the news, you had to walk down to the newsstand when it opened in the morning and buy a local edition reporting what had happened the previous day. But today a click or two is enough to read your local paper and any news source from anywhere in the world, updated up to the minute.

The Internet itself has been transformed. In its early days—which from a historical perspective are still relatively recent—it was a static network designed to shuttle a small freight of bytes or a short message between two terminals; it was a repository of information where content was published and maintained only by expert coders. Today, however, immense quantities of information are uploaded and downloaded over this electronic leviathan, and the content is very much our own, for now we are all commentators, publishers, and creators.

In the 1980s and 1990s, the Internet widened in scope to encompass the IT capabilities of universities and research centers, and, later on, public entities, institutions, and private enterprises from around the world. The Internet underwent immense growth; it was no longer a state-controlled project, but the largest computer network in the world, comprising over 50,000 sub-networks, 4 million systems, and 70 million users.

The emergence of  web 2.0  in the first decade of the twenty-first century was itself a revolution in the short history of the Internet, fostering the rise of social media and other interactive, crowd-based communication tools.

The Internet was no longer concerned with information exchange alone: it was a sophisticated multidisciplinary tool enabling individuals to create content, communicate with one another, and even escape reality. Today, we can send data from one end of the world to the other in a matter of seconds, make online presentations, live in parallel “game worlds,” and use pictures, video, sound, and text to share our real lives, our genuine identity. Personal stories go public; local issues become global.

The rise of the Internet has sparked a debate about how online communication affects social relationships. The Internet frees us from geographic fetters and brings us together in topic-based communities that are not tied down to any specific place. Ours is a networked, globalized society connected by new technologies. The Internet is the tool we use to interact with one another, and accordingly poses new challenges to privacy and security.

Information technologies have wrought fundamental change throughout society, driving it forward from the industrial age to the networked era. In our world, global information networks are vital infrastructure—but in what ways has this changed human relations? The Internet has changed business, education, government, healthcare, and even the ways in which we interact with our loved ones—it has become one of the key drivers of social evolution.

The changes in social communication are of particular significance. Although analogue tools still have their place in some sectors, new technologies are continuing to gain ground every day, transforming our communication practices and possibilities—particularly among younger people. The Internet has removed all communication barriers. Online, the conventional constraints of space and time disappear and there is a dizzyingly wide range of communicative possibilities. The impact of social media applications has triggered discussion of the “new communication democracy.”

The development of the Internet today is being shaped predominantly by instant, mobile communications. The mobile Internet is a fresh revolution. Comprehensive Internet connectivity via smartphones and tablets is leading to an increasingly mobile reality: we are not tied to any single specific device, and everything is in the cloud.

People no longer spend hours gazing at a computer screen after work or class; instead, they use their mobile devices to stay online everywhere, all the time.

Anyone failing to keep abreast of this radical change is losing out on an opportunity.

Communication Opportunities Created by the Internet

The Internet has become embedded in every aspect of our day-to-day lives, changing the way we interact with others. This insight struck me when I started out in the world of social media. I created my first social network in 2005, when I was finishing college in the United States—it had a political theme. I could already see that social media were on the verge of changing our way of communicating, helping us to share information by opening up a new channel that cuts across conventional ones.

That first attempt did not work out, but I learned from the experience.I get the feeling that in many countries failure is punished too harshly—but the fact is, the only surefire way of avoiding failure is to do nothing at all. I firmly believe that mistakes help you improve; getting it wrong teaches you how to get it right. Creativity, hard work, and a positive attitude will let you achieve any goal.

In 2006, after I moved to Spain, I created Tuenti. Tuenti (which, contrary to widespread belief, has nothing to do with the number 20; it is short for “tu entidad,” the Spanish for “your entity”) is a social communication platform for genuine friends. From the outset, the idea was to keep it simple, relevant, and private. That’s the key to its success.

I think the real value of social media is that you can stay in touch from moment to moment with the people who really matter to you. Social media let you share experiences and information; they get people and ideas in touch instantly, without frontiers. Camaraderie, friendship, and solidarity—social phenomena that have been around for as long as humanity itself—have been freed from the conventional restrictions of space and time and can now thrive in a rich variety of ways.

Out of all the plethora of communication opportunities that the Internet has opened up, I would highlight the emergence of social media and the way they have intricately melded into our daily lives. Social media have changed our personal space, altering the way we interact with our loved ones, our friends, and our sexual partners; they have forced us to rethink even basic daily processes like studying and shopping; they have affected the economy by nurturing the business startup culture and electronic commerce; they have even given us new ways to form broad-based political movements.

The Internet and Education

The Internet has clearly impacted all levels of education by providing unbounded possibilities for learning. I believe the future of education is a networked future. People can use the Internet to create and share knowledge and develop new ways of teaching and learning that captivate and stimulate students’ imagination at any time, anywhere, using any device. By connecting and empowering students and educators, we can speed up economic growth and enhance the well-being of society throughout the world. We should work together, over a network, to build the global learning society.

The network of networks is an inexhaustible source of information. What’s more, the Internet has enabled users to move away from their former passive role as mere recipients of messages conveyed by conventional media to an active role, choosing what information to receive, how, and when. The information recipient even decides whether or not they want to stay informed.

We have moved on from scattergun mass communication to a pattern where the user proactively selects the information they need.

Students can work interactively with one another, unrestricted by physical or time constraints. Today, you can use the Internet to access libraries, encyclopedias, art galleries, news archives, and other information sources from anywhere in the world: I believe this is a key advantage in the education field. The web is a formidable resource for enhancing the process of building knowledge.

I also believe the Internet is a wonderful tool for learning and practicing other languages—this continues to be a critical issue in many countries, including Spain, and, in a globalized world, calls for special efforts to improve.

The Internet, in addition to its communicative purposes, has become a vital tool for exchanging knowledge and education; it is not just an information source, or a locus where results can be published, it is also a channel for cooperating with other people and groups who are working on related research topics.

The Internet and Privacy and Security

Another key issue surrounding Internet use is privacy. Internet users are becoming more sensitive to the insight that privacy is a must-have in our lives.

Privacy has risen near the top of the agenda in step with an increasing awareness of the implications of using social media. Much of the time, people started to use social media with no real idea of the dangers, and have wised up only through trial and error—sheer accident, snafus, and mistakes. Lately, inappropriate use of social media seems to hit the headlines every day. Celebrities posting inappropriate comments to their profiles, private pictures and tapes leaked to the Internet at large, companies displaying arrogance toward users, and even criminal activities involving private-data trafficking or social media exploitation.

All this shows that—contrary to what many people seem to have assumed—online security and privacy are critical, and, I believe, will become even more important going forward. And, although every user needs privacy, the issue is particularly sensitive for minors—despite attempts to raise their awareness, children still behave recklessly online.

I have always been highly concerned about privacy. On Tuenti, the default privacy setting on every user account is the highest available level of data protection. Only people the user has accepted as a “friend” can access their personal details, see their telephone number, or download their pictures. This means that, by default, user information is not accessible to third parties. In addition, users are supported by procedures for reporting abuse. Any user can report a profile or photograph that is abusive, inappropriate, or violates the terms of use: action is taken immediately. Security and privacy queries are resolved within 24 hours.

We need to be aware that different Internet platforms provide widely different privacy experiences. Some of them are entirely open and public; no steps whatsoever are taken to protect personal information, and all profiles are indexable by Internet search engines.

On the other hand, I think the debate about whether social media use should be subject to an age requirement is somewhat pointless, given that most globally active platforms operate without age restrictions. The European regulatory framework is quite different from the United States and Asian codes. Companies based in Europe are bound by rigorous policies on privacy and underage use of social media. This can become a competitive drawback when the ground rules do not apply equally to all players—our American and Japanese competitors, for instance, are not required to place any kind of age constraint on access.

Outside the scope of what the industry or regulators can do, it is vital that users themselves look after the privacy of their data. I believe the information is the user’s property, so the user is the only party entitled to control the collection, use, and disclosure of any information about him or herself. Some social networks seem to have forgotten this fact—they sell data, make it impossible to delete an account, or make it complex and difficult to manage one’s privacy settings. Everything should be a lot simpler and more transparent.

Social networks should continue to devote intense efforts to developing self-regulation mechanisms and guidelines for this new environment of online coexistence to ensure that user information is safe: the Internet should be a space for freedom, but also for trust. The main way of ensuring that social media are used appropriately is awareness. But awareness and user education will be of little use unless it becomes an absolute requirement that the privacy of the individual is treated as a universal value.

The Internet and Culture

As in the sphere of education, the development of information and communication technologies and the wide-ranging effects of globalization are changing what we are, and the meaning of cultural identity. Ours is a complex world in which cultural flows across borders are always on the rise. The concepts of space, time, and distance are losing their conventional meanings. Cultural globalization is here, and a global movement of cultural processes and initiatives is underway.

Again, in the cultural arena, vast fields of opportunity open up thanks to online tools. The possibilities are multiplied for disseminating a proposal, an item of knowledge, or a work of art. Against those doomsayers who warn that the Internet is harming culture, I am radically optimistic. The Internet is bringing culture closer to more people, making it more easily and quickly accessible; it is also nurturing the rise of new forms of expression for art and the spread of knowledge. Some would say, in fact, that the Internet is not just a technology, but a cultural artifact in its own right.

In addition to its impact on culture itself, the Internet is enormously beneficial for innovation, which brings progress in all fields of endeavor—the creation of new goods, services, and ideas, the advance of knowledge and society, and increasing well-being.

The Internet and Personal Relationships

The Internet has also changed the way we interact with our family, friends, and life partners. Now everyone is connected to everyone else in a simpler, more accessible, and more immediate way; we can conduct part of our personal relationships using our laptops, smart phones, and tablets.

The benefits of always-online immediate availability are highly significant. I would find a long-distance relationship with my life partner or my family unthinkable without the communication tools that the network of networks provides me with. I’m living in Madrid, but I can stay close to my brother in California. For me, that is the key plus of the Internet: keeping in touch with the people who really matter to me.

As we have seen, the Internet revolution is not just technological; it also operates at a personal level, and throughout the structure of society. The Internet makes it possible for an unlimited number of people to communicate with one another freely and easily, in an unrestricted way.

Just a century ago, this was unimaginable. An increasing number of couples come together, stay together, or break up with the aid—or even as a consequence—of social communication tools. There are even apps and social networks out there that are purposely designed to help people get together for sex.

Of course, when compared to face-to-face communication, online communication is severely limited in the sense impressions it can convey (an estimated 60 to 70 percent of human communication takes place nonverbally), which can lead to misunderstandings and embarrassing situations—no doubt quite a few relationships have floundered as a result. I think the key is to be genuine, honest, and real at all times, using all the social media tools and their many advantages. Let’s just remember that a liar and a cheat online is a liar and a cheat offline too.

The Internet and Social and Political Activism

Even before the emergence of social media, pioneering experiments took place in the political sphere—like  Essembly , a project I was involved in. We started to create a politically themed platform to encourage debate and provide a home for social and political causes; but the social networks that have later nurtured activism in a new way were not as yet in existence.

Research has shown that young people who voice their political opinions on the Internet are more inclined to take part in public affairs. The better informed a citizen is, the more likely they will step into the polling booth, and the better they will express their political liberties. The Internet has proved to be a decisive communication tool in the latest election campaigns. It is thanks to the Internet that causes in the social, welfare, ideological, and political arenas have been spoken up for and have won the support of other citizens sharing those values—in many cases, with a real impact on government decision making.

The Internet and Consumer Trends

New technologies increase the speed of information transfer, and this opens up the possibility of “bespoke” shopping. The Internet offers an immense wealth of possibilities for buying content, news, and leisure products, and all sorts of advantages arise from e-commerce, which has become a major distribution channel for goods and services. You can book airline tickets, get a T-shirt from Australia, or buy food at an online grocery store. New applications support secure business transactions and create new commercial opportunities.

In this setting, it is the consumer who gains the upper hand, and the conventional rules and methods of distribution and marketing break down. Consumers’ access to information multiplies, and their reviews of their experience with various products and services take center stage. Access to product comparisons and rankings, user reviews and comments, and recommendations from bloggers with large followings have shaped a new scenario for consumer behavior, retail trade, and the economy in general.

The Internet and the Economy

The Internet is one of the key factors driving today’s economy. No one can afford to be left behind. Even in a tough macroeconomic framework, the Internet can foster growth, coupled with enhanced productivity and competitiveness.

The Internet provides opportunities for strengthening the economy: How should we tackle them? While Europe—and Spain specifically—are making efforts to make the best possible use of the Internet, there are areas in which their approach needs to improve. Europe faces a major challenge, and risks serious failure if it lets the United States run ahead on its own. The European Commission, in its “Startup Manifesto,” suggests that the Old World be more entrepreneur-friendly—the proposal is backed by companies like Spotify and Tuenti. Europe lacks some of the necessary know-how. We need to improve in financial services and in data privacy, moving past the obsolete regulatory framework we now have and making a bid to achieve a well-connected continent with a single market for 4G mobile connections. We need to make it easier to hire talent outside each given country.

The use of e-commerce should be encouraged among small and medium-sized enterprises so that growth opportunities can be exploited more intensely. Following the global trend of the Internet, companies should internalize their online business. And much more emphasis should be placed on new technologies training in the academic and business spheres.

Modern life is global, and Spain is competing against every other country in the world. I do not believe in defeatism or victim culture. Optimism should not translate into callousness, but I sincerely believe that if you think creatively, if you find a different angle, if you innovate with a positive attitude and without fear of failure, then you can change things for the better. Spain needs to seize the moment to reinvent itself, grasping the opportunities offered up by the online world. We need to act, take decisions, avoid “paralysis through analysis.” I sometimes feel we are too inclined to navel-gazing: Spain shuts itself off, fascinated with its own contradictions and local issues, and loses its sense of perspective. Spain should open up to the outside, use the crisis as an opportunity to do things differently, in a new way—creating value, underlining its strengths, aspiring to be something more.

In the United States, for instance, diving headfirst into a personal Internet-related startup is regarded as perfectly normal. I’m glad to see that this entrepreneurial spirit is beginning to take hold here as well. I believe in working hard, showing perseverance, keeping your goals in view, surrounding yourself with talent, and taking risks. No risk, no success. We live in an increasingly globalized world: of course you can have a Spain-based Internet startup, there are no frontiers.

We need to take risks and keep one step ahead of the future. It is precisely the most disruptive innovations that require radical changes in approach and product, which might not even find a market yet ready for them—these are the areas providing real opportunities to continue being relevant, to move forward and “earn” the future, creating value and maintaining leadership. It is the disruptive changes that enable a business, product, or service to revolutionize the market—and, particularly in the technology sector, such changes are a necessity.

The Future of Social Communications, Innovation, Mobile Technologies, and Total Connectivity in Our Lives

The future of social communications will be shaped by an  always-online  culture.  Always online  is already here and will set the trend going forward. Total connectivity, the Internet you can take with you wherever you go, is growing unstoppably. There is no turning back for global digitalization.

Innovation is the driving force of growth and progress, so we need to shake up entrenched processes, products, services, and industries, so that all of us together—including established businesses, reacting to their emerging competitors—can move forward together.

Innovation is shaping and will continue to shape the future of social communications. It is already a reality that Internet connections are increasingly mobile. A survey we conducted in early 2013 in partnership with Ipsos found that 94 percent of Tuenti users aged 16 to 35 owned cell phones, 84 percent of users connected to the Internet using their phones, and 47 percent had mobile data subscriptions for connecting to the Internet. A total of 74 percent of users reported connecting to the Internet from their phone on a daily basis, while 84 percent did so at least weekly. Only 13 percent did not use their phones to connect to the Internet, and that percentage is decreasing every day.

Mobile Internet use alters the pattern of device usage; the hitherto familiar ways of accessing the Internet are changing too. The smartphone activities taking up the most time (over three hours a day) include instant messaging (38%), social media use (35%), listening to music (24%), and web browsing (20%). The activities taking up the least time (under five minutes a day) are: SMS texting (51%), watching movies (43%), reading and writing e-mail (38%), and talking on the phone (32%). Things are still changing.

Smartphones are gaining ground in everyday life. Many of the purposes formerly served by other items now involve using our smartphones. Some 75 percent of young people reported having replaced their MP3 player with their phone, 74 percent use their phone as an alarm clock, 70 percent use it as their camera, and 67 percent use it as their watch.

We have been observing these shifts for a while, which is why we decided to reinvent ourselves by placing smartphones at the heart of our strategy. I want to use this example as a showcase of what is happening in the world of social communication and the Internet in general: mobile connectivity is bringing about a new revolution. Tuenti is no longer just a social network, and social media as a whole are becoming more than just websites. The new Tuenti provides native mobile apps for Android, iPhone, Blackberry, Windows Phone, as well as the Firefox OS app and the mobile version of the website, m.tuenti.com. Tuenti is now a cross-platform service that lets users connect with their friends and contacts from wherever they may be, using their device of choice. A user with a laptop can IM in real time with a user with a smartphone, and switch from one device to another without losing the thread of the conversation. The conversations are in the cloud, so data and contacts are preserved independently of the devices being used. This means the experience has to be made uniform across platforms, which sometimes involves paring down functionalities, given the processing and screen size limitations of mobile devices. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and so on are all evolving to become increasingly cross-platform experiences. But Tuenti is the first social network that has also developed its own Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO)—the company is an Internet service provider over the mobile network. Tuenti is an MVNO with a social media angle, and this may be the future path of telecommunications.

Social media are evolving to become something more, and innovation must be their hallmark if they are to continue being relevant. Tuenti now embraces both social communications and telecom services provision, offering value added by letting you use the mobile app free of charge and without using up your data traffic allowance, even if you have no credit on your prepaid card—this is wholly revolutionary in the telecom sector. The convergence of social media with more traditional sectors is already bringing about a new context for innovation, a new arena for the development and growth of the Internet.

Just about everything in the world of the Internet still lies ahead of us, and mobile communications as we know them must be reinvented by making them more digital. The future will be shaped by innovation converging with the impact of mobility. This applies not just to social media but to the Internet in general, particularly in the social communications field. I feel that many people do not understand what we are doing and have no idea of the potential development of companies like ours at the global level. Right now, there may be somebody out there, in some corner of the world, developing the tool that will turn the Internet upside down all over again. The tool that will alter our day-to-day life once more. Creating more opportunities, providing new benefits to individuals, bringing more individual and collective well-being. Just ten years ago, social media did not exist; in the next ten years, something else radically new will emerge. There are many areas in which products, processes, and services can be improved or created afresh. The future is brimming with opportunities, and the future of the Internet has only just begun.

Related publications

• The Impact of the Internet on Society: A Global Perspective
• Implications of the Revolution in Work and Family
• Vision 2020+: A Future to Be Built

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Technology over the long run: zoom out to see how dramatically the world can change within a lifetime

It is easy to underestimate how much the world can change within a lifetime. considering how dramatically the world has changed can help us see how different the world could be in a few years or decades..

Technology can change the world in ways that are unimaginable until they happen. Switching on an electric light would have been unimaginable for our medieval ancestors. In their childhood, our grandparents would have struggled to imagine a world connected by smartphones and the Internet.

Similarly, it is hard for us to imagine the arrival of all those technologies that will fundamentally change the world we are used to.

We can remind ourselves that our own future might look very different from the world today by looking back at how rapidly technology has changed our world in the past. That’s what this article is about.

One insight I take away from this long-term perspective is how unusual our time is. Technological change was extremely slow in the past – the technologies that our ancestors got used to in their childhood were still central to their lives in their old age. In stark contrast to those days, we live in a time of extraordinarily fast technological change. For recent generations, it was common for technologies that were unimaginable in their youth to become common later in life.

The long-run perspective on technological change

The big visualization offers a long-term perspective on the history of technology. 1

The timeline begins at the center of the spiral. The first use of stone tools, 3.4 million years ago, marks the beginning of this history of technology. 2 Each turn of the spiral represents 200,000 years of history. It took 2.4 million years – 12 turns of the spiral – for our ancestors to control fire and use it for cooking. 3

To be able to visualize the inventions in the more recent past – the last 12,000 years – I had to unroll the spiral. I needed more space to be able to show when agriculture, writing, and the wheel were invented. During this period, technological change was faster, but it was still relatively slow: several thousand years passed between each of these three inventions.

From 1800 onwards, I stretched out the timeline even further to show the many major inventions that rapidly followed one after the other.

The long-term perspective that this chart provides makes it clear just how unusually fast technological change is in our time.

You can use this visualization to see how technology developed in particular domains. Follow, for example, the history of communication: from writing to paper, to the printing press, to the telegraph, the telephone, the radio, all the way to the Internet and smartphones.

Or follow the rapid development of human flight. In 1903, the Wright brothers took the first flight in human history (they were in the air for less than a minute), and just 66 years later, we landed on the moon. Many people saw both within their lifetimes: the first plane and the moon landing.

This large visualization also highlights the wide range of technology’s impact on our lives. It includes extraordinarily beneficial innovations, such as the vaccine that allowed humanity to eradicate smallpox , and it includes terrible innovations, like the nuclear bombs that endanger the lives of all of us .

What will the next decades bring?

The red timeline reaches up to the present and then continues in green into the future. Many children born today, even without further increases in life expectancy, will live well into the 22nd century.

New vaccines, progress in clean, low-carbon energy, better cancer treatments – a range of future innovations could very much improve our living conditions and the environment around us. But, as I argue in a series of articles , there is one technology that could even more profoundly change our world: artificial intelligence (AI).

One reason why artificial intelligence is such an important innovation is that intelligence is the main driver of innovation itself. This fast-paced technological change could speed up even more if it’s driven not only by humanity’s intelligence but also by artificial intelligence. If this happens, the change currently stretched out over decades might happen within a very brief time span of just a year. Possibly even faster. 4

I think AI technology could have a fundamentally transformative impact on our world. In many ways, it is already changing our world, as I documented in this companion article . As this technology becomes more capable in the years and decades to come, it can give immense power to those who control it (and it poses the risk that it could escape our control entirely).

Such systems might seem hard to imagine today, but AI technology is advancing quickly. Many AI experts believe there is a real chance that human-level artificial intelligence will be developed within the next decades, as I documented in this article .

Technology will continue to change the world – we should all make sure that it changes it for the better

What is familiar to us today – photography, the radio, antibiotics, the Internet, or the International Space Station circling our planet – was unimaginable to our ancestors just a few generations ago. If your great-great-great grandparents could spend a week with you, they would be blown away by your everyday life.

What I take away from this history is that I will likely see technologies in my lifetime that appear unimaginable to me today.

In addition to this trend towards increasingly rapid innovation, there is a second long-run trend. Technology has become increasingly powerful. While our ancestors wielded stone tools, we are building globe-spanning AI systems and technologies that can edit our genes.

Because of the immense power that technology gives those who control it, there is little that is as important as the question of which technologies get developed during our lifetimes. Therefore, I think it is a mistake to leave the question about the future of technology to the technologists. Which technologies are controlled by whom is one of the most important political questions of our time because of the enormous power these technologies convey to those who control them.

We all should strive to gain the knowledge we need to contribute to an intelligent debate about the world we want to live in. To a large part, this means gaining knowledge and wisdom on the question of which technologies we want.

Acknowledgments: I would like to thank my colleagues Hannah Ritchie, Bastian Herre, Natasha Ahuja, Edouard Mathieu, Daniel Bachler, Charlie Giattino, and Pablo Rosado for their helpful comments on drafts of this essay and the visualization. Thanks also to Lizka Vaintrob and Ben Clifford for the conversation that initiated this visualization.

Appendix: About the choice of visualization in this article

The recent speed of technological change makes it difficult to picture the history of technology in one visualization. When you visualize this development on a linear timeline, then most of the timeline is almost empty, while all the action is crammed into the right corner:

In my large visualization here, I tried to avoid this problem and instead show the long history of technology in a way that lets you see when each technological breakthrough happened and how, within the last millennia, there was a continuous acceleration of technological change.

The recent speed of technological change makes it difficult to picture the history of technology in one visualization. In the appendix, I show how this would look if it were linear.

It is, of course, difficult to assess when exactly the first stone tools were used.

The research by McPherron et al. (2010) suggested that it was at least 3.39 million years ago. This is based on two fossilized bones found in Dikika in Ethiopia, which showed “stone-tool cut marks for flesh removal and percussion marks for marrow access”. These marks were interpreted as being caused by meat consumption and provide the first evidence that one of our ancestors, Australopithecus afarensis, used stone tools.

The research by Harmand et al. (2015) provided evidence for stone tool use in today’s Kenya 3.3 million years ago.

References:

McPherron et al. (2010) – Evidence for stone-tool-assisted consumption of animal tissues before 3.39 million years ago at Dikika, Ethiopia . Published in Nature.

Harmand et al. (2015) – 3.3-million-year-old stone tools from Lomekwi 3, West Turkana, Kenya . Published in Nature.

Evidence for controlled fire use approximately 1 million years ago is provided by Berna et al. (2012) Microstratigraphic evidence of in situ fire in the Acheulean strata of Wonderwerk Cave, Northern Cape province, South Africa , published in PNAS.

The authors write: “The ability to control fire was a crucial turning point in human evolution, but the question of when hominins first developed this ability still remains. Here we show that micromorphological and Fourier transform infrared microspectroscopy (mFTIR) analyses of intact sediments at the site of Wonderwerk Cave, Northern Cape province, South Africa, provide unambiguous evidence—in the form of burned bone and ashed plant remains—that burning took place in the cave during the early Acheulean occupation, approximately 1.0 Ma. To the best of our knowledge, this is the earliest secure evidence for burning in an archaeological context.”

This is what authors like Holden Karnofsky called ‘Process for Automating Scientific and Technological Advancement’ or PASTA. Some recent developments go in this direction: DeepMind’s AlphaFold helped to make progress on one of the large problems in biology, and they have also developed an AI system that finds new algorithms that are relevant to building a more powerful AI.

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Relationships Articles & More

What makes technology good or bad for us, how technology affects our well-being partly depends on whether it strengthens our relationships..

Everyone’s worried about smartphones. Headlines like “ Have smartphones destroyed a generation? ” and “ Smartphone addiction could be changing your brain ” paint a bleak picture of our smartphone addiction and its long-term consequences. This isn’t a new lament—public opinion at the advent of the newspaper worried that people would forego the stimulating pleasures of early-morning conversation in favor of reading the daily .

Is the story of technology really that bad? Certainly there’s some reason to worry. Smartphone use has been linked to serious issues, such as dwindling attention spans , crippling depression , and even increased incidence of brain cancer . Ultimately, though, the same concern comes up again and again: Smartphones can’t be good for us, because they’re replacing the real human connection of the good old days.

Everyone’s heard how today’s teens just sit together in a room, texting, instead of actually talking to each other. But could those teenagers actually be getting something meaningful and real out of all that texting?

The science of connection

A quick glance at the research on technology-mediated interaction reveals an ambivalent literature. Some studies show that time spent socializing online can decrease loneliness , increase well-being , and help the socially anxious learn how to connect to others. Other studies suggest that time spent socializing online can cause loneliness , decrease well-being , and foster a crippling dependence on technology-mediated interaction to the point that users prefer it to face-to-face conversation.

It’s tempting to say that some of these studies must be right and others wrong, but the body of evidence on both sides is a little too robust to be swept under the rug. Instead, the impact of social technology is more complicated. Sometimes, superficially similar behaviors have fundamentally different consequences. Sometimes online socialization is good for you, sometimes it’s bad, and the devil is entirely in the details.

This isn’t a novel proposition; after all, conflicting results started appearing within the first few studies into the internet’s social implications, back in the 1990s. Many people have suggested that to understand the consequences of online socialization, we need to dig deeper into situational factors and circumstances. But what we still have to do is move beyond recognition of the problem to provide an answer: When, how, and why are some online interactions great, while others are dangerous?

The interpersonal connection behaviors framework

As a scientist of close relationships, I can’t help but see online interactions differently from thinkers in other fields. People build relationships by demonstrating their understanding of each other’s needs and perspectives, a cyclical process that brings them closer together. If I tell you my secrets, and you respond supportively, I’m much more likely to confide in you again—and you, in turn, are much more likely to confide in me.

This means that every time two people talk to each other, an opportunity for relationship growth is unfolding. Many times, that opportunity isn’t taken; we aren’t about to have an in-depth conversation with the barista who asks for our order. But connection is always theoretically possible, and that’s true whether we’re interacting online or face-to-face.

Close relationships are the bread and butter of happiness—and even health. Being socially isolated is a stronger predictor of mortality than is smoking multiple cigarettes a day . If we want to understand the role technology plays in our well-being, we need to start with the role it plays in our relationships.

And it turns out that the kind of technology-mediated interactions that lead to positive outcomes are exactly those that are likely to build stronger relationships. Spending your time online by scheduling interactions with people you see day in and day out seems to pay dividends in increased social integration . Using the internet to compensate for being lonely just makes you lonelier; using the internet to actively seek out connection has the opposite effect .

“The kind of technology-mediated interactions that lead to positive outcomes are exactly those that are likely to build stronger relationships”

On the other hand, technology-mediated interactions that don’t really address our close relationships don’t seem to do us any good—and might, in fact, do us harm. Passively scrolling through your Facebook feed without interacting with people has been linked to decreased well-being and increased depression post-Facebook use.

That kind of passive usage is a good example of “ social snacking .” Like eating junk food, social snacking can temporarily satisfy you, but it’s lacking in nutritional content. Looking at your friends’ posts without ever responding might make you feel more connected to them, but it doesn’t build intimacy.

Passive engagement has a second downside, as well: social comparison . When we compare our messy lived experiences to others’ curated self-presentations, we are likely to suffer from lowered self-esteem , happiness, and well-being. This effect is only exacerbated when we consume people’s digital lives without interacting with them, making it all too easy to miss the less photogenic moments of their lives.

Moving forward

The interpersonal connection behaviors framework doesn’t explain everything that might influence our well-being after spending time on social media. The internet poses plenty of other dangers—for two examples, the sense of wasting time or emotional contagion from negative news. However, a focus on meaningful social interaction can help explain decades of contradictory findings. And even if the framework itself is challenged by future work, its central concept is bound to be upheld: We have to study the details of how people are spending their time online if we want to understand its likely effects.

In the meantime, this framework has some practical implications for those worried about their own online time. If you make sure you’re using social media for genuinely social purposes, with conscious thought about how it can improve your life and your relationships, you’ll be far more likely to enjoy your digital existence.

This article was originally published on the Behavioral Scientist . Read the original article .

About the Author

Jenna Clark

Jenna Clark, Ph.D. , is a senior behavioral researcher at Duke University's Center for Advanced Hindsight, where she works to help people make healthy decisions in spite of themselves. She's also interested in how technology contributes to our well-being through its effect on our close personal relationships.

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Chapter 8: COVID and learning

8.2.3 The overwhelming influence of technology (research essay)

English 102, april 2021, introduction.

Before the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, no one believed that it would have the capability of being able to shut down schools, restricting human contact, and forcing individuals of every social class to rely upon technology. These three main issues have a connection with technological communication, being their main source of keeping in contact with their needs. As a college student living within the beginning and until the end of the pandemic, I can say that society has involuntarily been forced to use technology as a compromise to spread the virus. Places filled with students and teachers are most affected in these times as they are told to decide whether they would like to be in-person or online. This major decision will affect how students and teachers can communicate with each other more effectively.

However, the school system is still not fully prepared to make such a sudden change because of how it was based to be taught in-person. Students need to have strong communication with their teachers in order to keep up with work and understand the material. This idea is also vice versa with teachers to understand if their students are struggling or need help. This is a very difficult period to survive, but both groups need to work together with technology. As a source of knowledge and power, there is only so much that technology can do before it all depends on how students and teachers use it to keep up with their studies.

The main reason why schools along with their boards of education are still running is because of the power of technology. The idea of recreating a classroom with teachers, students, and a smart/black board, creates a virtual environment that mimics the feeling of being in an actual classroom. I have begun to realize more that since I am going to continue into my major of health sciences and knowing that the pandemic will not go away shows me that we will have to rely upon technology fully until the end of the pandemic.

Since the beginning of this semester, the opportunity of being able to research the topic of how COVID-19 has affected communication between teachers and students has taught me a lot of what goes on in terms of communication and literacy. I learned more about how the pandemic has affected different social classes and their struggles, and how other students have combated against the hardships of the virus. Through research, it has allowed me to agree with myself and change my major for how things will continue in the future of relying on technology to teach students difficult material and hoping that an online curriculum will lead to the same results of an in-person school.

One compromise that the boards of education and government officials decided on was to close schools. This generally seems like a good idea to restrict human contact and relieve the stress surrounding the pandemic. However, closing schools over long periods of time will lead to affecting the academic records of students (Kuhfeld et al). With how the pandemic has continued to spread it may take at least 2 or more years to recover from the closing of schools (Kuhfeld et al). There was a research study conducted within china on young individuals with their mental health. It was revealed in the study that young people had serious mental problems (Leilei et al). There were other factors incorporated, however this simple main idea of the pandemic causing stress and anxiety for young people can be compared to other individuals around the world. Since a year has passed, the pandemic has had the power to reach most ends of the earth and we are only now creating a vaccine. These are only a few examples of the effects that the pandemic has had on a general group of individuals to show what could possibly affect students and teachers around the world.

For some additional support in my topic and outside scholarly resources, I decided to create my own study on the peers around me. The individuals included within my experiment were high school and college students as they are the population, I am surrounding my topic on. The experiment was a 6-question survey on google forms with answers of yes, no, or just a little. My thought process on only having two options was so that the students would make up their mind and to not give me confused data. I felt that it was better if I got responses that my peers were forced to think about, rather than taking the easy route and saying an in-between answer.

The first question that greeted my classmates was “Have you ever struggled with online schooling?” The reason behind this question was to see how my peers have felt about online schooling since it has been a year since the lockdown protocol. Of my 52 responses, 48.1% said yes, 19.2% said no, and 32.7% said just a little. I was not surprised so see that at least half of the responses felt that online schooling has been unpleasant. The other half of the responses felt mixed about online schooling, being average and just a little difficult. The reason this question is the only one to have a third choice was because I did not want my experiment to be boring or suffocating with just two choices to choose from. Allowing my peers to effortlessly think about their answers and respond was my thought process for getting responses that came to their mind instantly.

The second question is a follow-up to the first because I wanted to make my experiment known that this is the topic I am researching. The second question asked, “Do you prefer to take school online?” With this question, I wanted to see that if my peers enjoy online schooling then that could explain why there were people who did not find online schooling hard in the first question. The results showed that 78.8% of the responses said no, and 21.1% said yes to preferring online schooling. I was also not surprised by these results because of the research I have been conducting on my topic for the past couple of months. This entire experiment cannot be used to represent the entire population of high school and college students; however, it is a good representation of a small strata of students who live in Ohio and go to public schools. The location and environment of my peers is an advantage to other students who live with low-income, or do not have the technology to know what online schooling feels like.

With the months of doing research on how the pandemic has affected students with their studies or just living a normal life, I wanted to ask my own question about technology. Through my research I learned that there were a decent number of students around the country who did not have access to the internet or have sufficient technological devices to go to class or do homework. This frightened me because the pandemic could continue and involuntary hurt students of the lower social class. My final question was, “Do you own a device that can easily help you access your classes and homework?” Of the 52 responses, no one was able to say no, which is surprising and frightening. The idea of technology having such an impact on how students view schooling, or even having access to technology can impact on how students can go to school. This experiment has been done before on larger scales and with the same outcomes, however I wanted to create my own in order to see for myself that I could trust the scholarly articles I have been using to justify my research. With these discoveries in mind, it will be much easier to understand the reason behind the research questions I will base my topic on.

Research Questions

My first question dealing with communication affecting schools: How do teachers use technology to communicate with students during the pandemic? My next question is similar; however, it is more specific to college students today. How do teachers incorporate the use of blackboard collaborate and student emails to rely on the information about the course?

Research Question One

So how do teachers use technology to communicate with students during the pandemic? The purpose of my first question being so simple-worded was because I wanted to generalize about the studies and conversations that went on under this question. The idea of communication is that it requires the effort of both sides. But since the pandemic has begun exposing food insecurities around the country, students in a difficult home environment are now struggling to have something to eat daily (Lancker). In addition to their food struggles, students also do not have suitable online learning environments with no heat or reliable internet access (Lancker). Knowing that these unfortunate students exist, I still have not seen any compromises made in order to help students in general. Students with bad internet connection, unusable devices, and struggling to stay healthy are all problems that poor families have begun to face. This is the hard truth where schools and their boards of education are still going through academic year like the pandemic does not exist. However, this my biased point of view comes from the fact that I know that I am not the only student facing challenges during this difficult time.

There are not many chances where adults and children alike, get to experience a long period of struggle and distress. Some could argue that with COVID-19 having impacted face-to-face interactions it has the advantage of positively affecting our daily lives. One positive impact that the pandemic has had, is that it created a time period where we would learn new skills for the time being of staying inside all the time. New hobbies, catching up with old friends, reading books, and or having time to relax. However, James Gee’s article supports the idea that COVID-19 is negatively affecting the communication between individuals. Gee goes into detail on the ideas of “discourses” and “identity kits;” he associates these terms with the requirements of using language and where it comes from. Gee describes a discourse as an identity kit that is comes with the complete package of how an individual interacts with others to be recognized (Gee 18). He also categorizes different discourses by “primary” or “secondary” to separate the communication that goes on between and individual with their family versus outside experiences. For the purpose of this research paper, the term secondary discourse will be focused on because of its importance. In Gee’s article he states that, “beyond the primary discourse, however, are other discourses which crucially involve social institutions beyond the family.” Gee describes secondary discourses to be an identity kit that is created from interacting with outside experiences where social interaction occurs. These social institutions that Gee writes tries to explain places of work, school grounds, stores, or business buildings.

The reason why I use Gee’s idea of secondary discourses is to show that with COVID-19 coming into existence means that if the pandemic continues, then that will lead to the end of secondary discourses. In logical sense, this will also mean that people in the future will only have a primary discourse. Meaning that they will only know how to speak with family members, and not knowing how to communicate with others in the outside world. On the other hand, there is also the existence of technology which can temporarily keep secondary discourses alive. There have not been any academic articles where scientists have conducted research on the rate at which secondary discourses are disappearing, but that does not debunk the idea of that this could negatively impact society in the future.

Mental Health

As a freshman college student, I realized that in high school we did not get mental health awareness week. But last month from March 8-12, the college sent out emails and created PowerPoints to portray how they were trying to help their students. It was a good effort to show that the Board of Education knew that their students were facing hard times during their studies. On April 20, 2020, there was a study conducted on 584 participants ranging from the ages of 14-35. The purpose of this experiment was to understand the mental health of young people a couple weeks after there was worldwide news of the pandemic (Leilei et al). The results came out to show that about 40.4% of the participants had psychological problems, and about 14.4% had PTSD symptoms (Leilei et al). As with every experiment, we cannot use this small substratum of data to represent every young person living within the United States. For example, during the first 2 weeks of hearing about the pandemic I did not feel any sort of trauma or stress until after a couple months of being in lockdown. Correlation does not mean causation . This sentence usually shows up in academic areas of statistics or math generally. Just because this experiment has shown that COVID-19 has negatively affected the mental health of young people does not mean causation. However, with the assistance of more studies being conducted over a long period of time it will eventually justify the prediction.

There was another study conducted on the mental health of young people during the pandemic, however this time it was with college students from April 25 to May 8. So, this study was conducted around the same time with article from Leilei Liang, but with a different population of participants. There was a total of 530 college students who responded to their survey, and on average about 80% of the respondents knew of how the virus was transmitted and the importance of social distancing (Baloran). Within the study, it was found that even though students responded with having anxiety there was still several students who were able to deal with their own anxiety.

From the experiments with Leilei Liang and Erick Baloran, the only difference is that population that was used. One study had a general group of young people, and the other had students from two local colleges in the Philippines. I feel that both experiments have enough similarities to be compared with each other and I can see that I am somewhat correct in my assumption. Both were conducted at the same time, had a similar size in participants, conducted on a similar age group, and reporting on the same conclusions. These similarities can be used to support my idea of the pandemic students academically and mentally. My own research experiment, the loss of Gee’s secondary discourses, and the decline of the mental health of young people and eventually society can all be supported by these two scholarly articles. With that in mind, COVID-19 has been affecting the mental health of young people and could potentially force society to lose their ability of talking with others outside of their family. Online learning has been the main source of continuing academics, but to say that it is keeping students learning and motivated is not correct as seen from their mental health. There is only so much that technology can do in order to preserve the face-to-face communication before society reaches its breaking point.

Research Question Two

How do teachers incorporate the use of blackboard collaborate and student emails to relay information about the course? From my first research question, we found that COVID-19 affected the mental health of young people and forced them to only have primary discourses. These issues in return affect how students communicate with their teachers as seen from how students nowadays do not turn on their cameras in online classes. I have experienced this firsthand where in my biology class that only meets once a week. There are roughly 100-110 students in my section, and only about 7 students on average are willing to turn on their cameras. From a professor’s viewpoint on this situation, I would assume that they would be frustrated and confused with the sudden change of scenery. Teaching in front of a class face-to-face is very different to teaching a list of names that are blank staring back at you.

In the article, “ Teachers’ Covid-19 awareness, distance learning education experiences and perceptions towards institutional readiness and challenges ” the study concluded that teachers were fully aware of how the pandemic would affect classrooms. However, one big issue that comes to mind is colleges and universities who are asking for thousands of dollars in return for online schooling. Boards of education across the country have still not been able to create a solution that makes the life of their students easier. Their response to COVID-19 was to train teachers to be fluent in online learning education (Alea et al). From this, teachers will create recorded lectures, notes, and online homework assignments from prepaid textbooks. Colleges with Blackboard Collaborate have an auto messenger that sends students assignments or lectures that have not been finished yet. Professors want to keep their students on top of things, so they try to always notify their students of work that is to be completed soon. They are also trying to be innovative so that they can keep the attention of their students and to promote and enjoyable work environment at home (Suryaman, Maman, et al).

As a college student, checking your email is part of the daily routine because a professor could have an issue with the class, or wants to give information on the coming days. For me, having Blackboard Collaborate remind me of assignments is very helpful because even though I finished the assignments early it tells me that I am keeping up with my work. However, not many students can just casually do their work whenever they would like without and issues.

In the article, “ Online teaching-learning in higher education during lockdown period of COVID-19 pandemic ” the study goes into detail about the relationship between teachers and students on online teaching. Overall, there seemed to be no issue within the data but there was an issue between students and technology. Students from different socio-economic backgrounds were seen to be having more trouble with keeping up with school as they do not meet the technological requirements (Mishra el al). This article also noted that professors were sending out weekly emails in order to keep their students informed. I would say that it is important for teachers and professors to be persistent in their emails and messages to students to keep us at ease. I am still only a freshman college student and I imagined myself to be on campus and talking with my peers. However, I am left with a computer screen with a list of names and a professor who is lecturing from past notes.

These 2 scholarly articles allowed me to realize the importance of teachers to be prepared and ready to compromises. From emails to a full access online system that allows students to work on homework and to obtain lectures/notes. With an additional article from 3 researchers, they found that technology is one of the many factors that ensures a successful transition into online learning (Almaiah et al). A similarity that all 3 articles share is that they heavily rely upon the strength of technology to recreate a classroom environment. So far, technology has been doing well enough to keep students on track with their academics. However, at the same time pushing students back because of whether they come from different socio-economic backgrounds or rural or urban communities. Even if every student was able to have sufficient access the internet, there is nothing that says servers may crash or malfunctions when being used. Not usually, but there will be students who will face issues with their technology, and they will have to tell their teacher/professor.

For example, there is nothing in a college syllabus that protects and individual who will occasionally not be able to use their technology. Their technological constraints, along with their teachers having feedback and not knowing how to handle the technology can be a huge setback (Muthuprasad et al). Some might say to move to a different location for a better connection, however in the period we are in that is not practical. If this individual also does not have enough money to afford a new laptop, then I can assume this will cause a lot of stress for them. In the end, technology plays a huge role in whether students will succeed or fail in keeping up with their academics.

After answering both research questions, COVID-19 has been seen to have a negative impact on both students and teachers. From the multiple scholarly articles and conducting my own experiment, this is enough evidence to prove how heavily influenced communication is by technology, and how schools are not readily prepared for such a change. With how advanced technology has become, there is only so much that it can do before it all depends on how students and teachers use it to keep up with higher levels of education. With mental health and secondary discourses being affected, students are also required to fully rely upon technology in order to succeed for their own benefit. I would say that both students and teachers are required to work hard in order to keep up with the curriculum they are given. From my evidence and research questions I hope that I bring to light at how classrooms have changed due to the existence of COVID-19. This is a time where mistakes should be allowed, and teachers along with students should be ready to make compromises.

Works Cited

Alea, Lapada Aris, et al. “Teachers’ Covid-19 awareness, distance learning education experiences and perceptions towards institutional readiness and challenges.” International Journal of Learning, Teaching and Educational Research 19.6 (2020): 127-144. Accessed March 16, 2021.

Almaiah, Mohammed Amin, Ahmad Al-Khasawneh, and Ahmad Althunibat. “Exploring the critical challenges and factors influencing the E-learning system usage during COVID-19 pandemic.” Education and Information Technologies 25 (2020): 5261-5280. Accessed March 16, 2021.

Baloran, Erick T. “Knowledge, attitudes, anxiety, and coping strategies of students during COVID-19 pandemic.” Journal of Loss and Trauma 25.8 (2020): 635-642. Accessed March 16, 2021.

Gee, James Paul. “What is literacy.” Negotiating academic literacies: Teaching and learning   across languages and cultures (1998): 18-25. Accessed February 9, 2021.

Kuhfeld, Megan, et al. “Projecting the potential impact of COVID-19 school closures on academic achievement.” Educational Researcher 49.8 (2020): 549-565. Accessed March 16, 2021.

Liang, Leilei, et al. “The effect of COVID-19 on youth mental health.” Psychiatric quarterly 91.3 (2020): 841-852. Accessed March 16, 2021.

Mishra, Lokanath, Tushar Gupta, and Abha Shree. “Online teaching-learning in higher education during lockdown period of COVID-19 pandemic.” International Journal of Educational   Research Open 1 (2020): 100012. Accessed March 16, 2021.

Muthuprasad, T., et al. “Students’ perception and preference for online education in India during COVID-19 pandemic.” Social Sciences & Humanities Open 3.1 (2021): 100101. Accessed March 16, 2021.

Suryaman, Maman, et al. “COVID-19 pandemic and home online learning system: Does it affect the quality of pharmacy school learning?.” Syst. Rev. Pharm 11 (2020): 524-530. Accessed March 16, 2021.

Van Lancker, Wim, and Zachary Parolin. “COVID-19, school closures, and child poverty: a social crisis in the making.” The Lancet Public Health 5.5 (2020): e243-e244. Accessed March 16, 2021.

Understanding Literacy in Our Lives by Max is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Promises and Pitfalls of Technology

Politics and privacy, private-sector influence and big tech, state competition and conflict, author biography, how is technology changing the world, and how should the world change technology.

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Josephine Wolff; How Is Technology Changing the World, and How Should the World Change Technology?. Global Perspectives 1 February 2021; 2 (1): 27353. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/gp.2021.27353

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Technologies are becoming increasingly complicated and increasingly interconnected. Cars, airplanes, medical devices, financial transactions, and electricity systems all rely on more computer software than they ever have before, making them seem both harder to understand and, in some cases, harder to control. Government and corporate surveillance of individuals and information processing relies largely on digital technologies and artificial intelligence, and therefore involves less human-to-human contact than ever before and more opportunities for biases to be embedded and codified in our technological systems in ways we may not even be able to identify or recognize. Bioengineering advances are opening up new terrain for challenging philosophical, political, and economic questions regarding human-natural relations. Additionally, the management of these large and small devices and systems is increasingly done through the cloud, so that control over them is both very remote and removed from direct human or social control. The study of how to make technologies like artificial intelligence or the Internet of Things “explainable” has become its own area of research because it is so difficult to understand how they work or what is at fault when something goes wrong (Gunning and Aha 2019) .

This growing complexity makes it more difficult than ever—and more imperative than ever—for scholars to probe how technological advancements are altering life around the world in both positive and negative ways and what social, political, and legal tools are needed to help shape the development and design of technology in beneficial directions. This can seem like an impossible task in light of the rapid pace of technological change and the sense that its continued advancement is inevitable, but many countries around the world are only just beginning to take significant steps toward regulating computer technologies and are still in the process of radically rethinking the rules governing global data flows and exchange of technology across borders.

These are exciting times not just for technological development but also for technology policy—our technologies may be more advanced and complicated than ever but so, too, are our understandings of how they can best be leveraged, protected, and even constrained. The structures of technological systems as determined largely by government and institutional policies and those structures have tremendous implications for social organization and agency, ranging from open source, open systems that are highly distributed and decentralized, to those that are tightly controlled and closed, structured according to stricter and more hierarchical models. And just as our understanding of the governance of technology is developing in new and interesting ways, so, too, is our understanding of the social, cultural, environmental, and political dimensions of emerging technologies. We are realizing both the challenges and the importance of mapping out the full range of ways that technology is changing our society, what we want those changes to look like, and what tools we have to try to influence and guide those shifts.

Technology can be a source of tremendous optimism. It can help overcome some of the greatest challenges our society faces, including climate change, famine, and disease. For those who believe in the power of innovation and the promise of creative destruction to advance economic development and lead to better quality of life, technology is a vital economic driver (Schumpeter 1942) . But it can also be a tool of tremendous fear and oppression, embedding biases in automated decision-making processes and information-processing algorithms, exacerbating economic and social inequalities within and between countries to a staggering degree, or creating new weapons and avenues for attack unlike any we have had to face in the past. Scholars have even contended that the emergence of the term technology in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries marked a shift from viewing individual pieces of machinery as a means to achieving political and social progress to the more dangerous, or hazardous, view that larger-scale, more complex technological systems were a semiautonomous form of progress in and of themselves (Marx 2010) . More recently, technologists have sharply criticized what they view as a wave of new Luddites, people intent on slowing the development of technology and turning back the clock on innovation as a means of mitigating the societal impacts of technological change (Marlowe 1970) .

At the heart of fights over new technologies and their resulting global changes are often two conflicting visions of technology: a fundamentally optimistic one that believes humans use it as a tool to achieve greater goals, and a fundamentally pessimistic one that holds that technological systems have reached a point beyond our control. Technology philosophers have argued that neither of these views is wholly accurate and that a purely optimistic or pessimistic view of technology is insufficient to capture the nuances and complexity of our relationship to technology (Oberdiek and Tiles 1995) . Understanding technology and how we can make better decisions about designing, deploying, and refining it requires capturing that nuance and complexity through in-depth analysis of the impacts of different technological advancements and the ways they have played out in all their complicated and controversial messiness across the world.

These impacts are often unpredictable as technologies are adopted in new contexts and come to be used in ways that sometimes diverge significantly from the use cases envisioned by their designers. The internet, designed to help transmit information between computer networks, became a crucial vehicle for commerce, introducing unexpected avenues for crime and financial fraud. Social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, designed to connect friends and families through sharing photographs and life updates, became focal points of election controversies and political influence. Cryptocurrencies, originally intended as a means of decentralized digital cash, have become a significant environmental hazard as more and more computing resources are devoted to mining these forms of virtual money. One of the crucial challenges in this area is therefore recognizing, documenting, and even anticipating some of these unexpected consequences and providing mechanisms to technologists for how to think through the impacts of their work, as well as possible other paths to different outcomes (Verbeek 2006) . And just as technological innovations can cause unexpected harm, they can also bring about extraordinary benefits—new vaccines and medicines to address global pandemics and save thousands of lives, new sources of energy that can drastically reduce emissions and help combat climate change, new modes of education that can reach people who would otherwise have no access to schooling. Regulating technology therefore requires a careful balance of mitigating risks without overly restricting potentially beneficial innovations.

Nations around the world have taken very different approaches to governing emerging technologies and have adopted a range of different technologies themselves in pursuit of more modern governance structures and processes (Braman 2009) . In Europe, the precautionary principle has guided much more anticipatory regulation aimed at addressing the risks presented by technologies even before they are fully realized. For instance, the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation focuses on the responsibilities of data controllers and processors to provide individuals with access to their data and information about how that data is being used not just as a means of addressing existing security and privacy threats, such as data breaches, but also to protect against future developments and uses of that data for artificial intelligence and automated decision-making purposes. In Germany, Technische Überwachungsvereine, or TÜVs, perform regular tests and inspections of technological systems to assess and minimize risks over time, as the tech landscape evolves. In the United States, by contrast, there is much greater reliance on litigation and liability regimes to address safety and security failings after-the-fact. These different approaches reflect not just the different legal and regulatory mechanisms and philosophies of different nations but also the different ways those nations prioritize rapid development of the technology industry versus safety, security, and individual control. Typically, governance innovations move much more slowly than technological innovations, and regulations can lag years, or even decades, behind the technologies they aim to govern.

In addition to this varied set of national regulatory approaches, a variety of international and nongovernmental organizations also contribute to the process of developing standards, rules, and norms for new technologies, including the International Organization for Standardization­ and the International Telecommunication Union. These multilateral and NGO actors play an especially important role in trying to define appropriate boundaries for the use of new technologies by governments as instruments of control for the state.

At the same time that policymakers are under scrutiny both for their decisions about how to regulate technology as well as their decisions about how and when to adopt technologies like facial recognition themselves, technology firms and designers have also come under increasing criticism. Growing recognition that the design of technologies can have far-reaching social and political implications means that there is more pressure on technologists to take into consideration the consequences of their decisions early on in the design process (Vincenti 1993; Winner 1980) . The question of how technologists should incorporate these social dimensions into their design and development processes is an old one, and debate on these issues dates back to the 1970s, but it remains an urgent and often overlooked part of the puzzle because so many of the supposedly systematic mechanisms for assessing the impacts of new technologies in both the private and public sectors are primarily bureaucratic, symbolic processes rather than carrying any real weight or influence.

Technologists are often ill-equipped or unwilling to respond to the sorts of social problems that their creations have—often unwittingly—exacerbated, and instead point to governments and lawmakers to address those problems (Zuckerberg 2019) . But governments often have few incentives to engage in this area. This is because setting clear standards and rules for an ever-evolving technological landscape can be extremely challenging, because enforcement of those rules can be a significant undertaking requiring considerable expertise, and because the tech sector is a major source of jobs and revenue for many countries that may fear losing those benefits if they constrain companies too much. This indicates not just a need for clearer incentives and better policies for both private- and public-sector entities but also a need for new mechanisms whereby the technology development and design process can be influenced and assessed by people with a wider range of experiences and expertise. If we want technologies to be designed with an eye to their impacts, who is responsible for predicting, measuring, and mitigating those impacts throughout the design process? Involving policymakers in that process in a more meaningful way will also require training them to have the analytic and technical capacity to more fully engage with technologists and understand more fully the implications of their decisions.

At the same time that tech companies seem unwilling or unable to rein in their creations, many also fear they wield too much power, in some cases all but replacing governments and international organizations in their ability to make decisions that affect millions of people worldwide and control access to information, platforms, and audiences (Kilovaty 2020) . Regulators around the world have begun considering whether some of these companies have become so powerful that they violate the tenets of antitrust laws, but it can be difficult for governments to identify exactly what those violations are, especially in the context of an industry where the largest players often provide their customers with free services. And the platforms and services developed by tech companies are often wielded most powerfully and dangerously not directly by their private-sector creators and operators but instead by states themselves for widespread misinformation campaigns that serve political purposes (Nye 2018) .

Since the largest private entities in the tech sector operate in many countries, they are often better poised to implement global changes to the technological ecosystem than individual states or regulatory bodies, creating new challenges to existing governance structures and hierarchies. Just as it can be challenging to provide oversight for government use of technologies, so, too, oversight of the biggest tech companies, which have more resources, reach, and power than many nations, can prove to be a daunting task. The rise of network forms of organization and the growing gig economy have added to these challenges, making it even harder for regulators to fully address the breadth of these companies’ operations (Powell 1990) . The private-public partnerships that have emerged around energy, transportation, medical, and cyber technologies further complicate this picture, blurring the line between the public and private sectors and raising critical questions about the role of each in providing critical infrastructure, health care, and security. How can and should private tech companies operating in these different sectors be governed, and what types of influence do they exert over regulators? How feasible are different policy proposals aimed at technological innovation, and what potential unintended consequences might they have?

Conflict between countries has also spilled over significantly into the private sector in recent years, most notably in the case of tensions between the United States and China over which technologies developed in each country will be permitted by the other and which will be purchased by other customers, outside those two countries. Countries competing to develop the best technology is not a new phenomenon, but the current conflicts have major international ramifications and will influence the infrastructure that is installed and used around the world for years to come. Untangling the different factors that feed into these tussles as well as whom they benefit and whom they leave at a disadvantage is crucial for understanding how governments can most effectively foster technological innovation and invention domestically as well as the global consequences of those efforts. As much of the world is forced to choose between buying technology from the United States or from China, how should we understand the long-term impacts of those choices and the options available to people in countries without robust domestic tech industries? Does the global spread of technologies help fuel further innovation in countries with smaller tech markets, or does it reinforce the dominance of the states that are already most prominent in this sector? How can research universities maintain global collaborations and research communities in light of these national competitions, and what role does government research and development spending play in fostering innovation within its own borders and worldwide? How should intellectual property protections evolve to meet the demands of the technology industry, and how can those protections be enforced globally?

These conflicts between countries sometimes appear to challenge the feasibility of truly global technologies and networks that operate across all countries through standardized protocols and design features. Organizations like the International Organization for Standardization, the World Intellectual Property Organization, the United Nations Industrial Development Organization, and many others have tried to harmonize these policies and protocols across different countries for years, but have met with limited success when it comes to resolving the issues of greatest tension and disagreement among nations. For technology to operate in a global environment, there is a need for a much greater degree of coordination among countries and the development of common standards and norms, but governments continue to struggle to agree not just on those norms themselves but even the appropriate venue and processes for developing them. Without greater global cooperation, is it possible to maintain a global network like the internet or to promote the spread of new technologies around the world to address challenges of sustainability? What might help incentivize that cooperation moving forward, and what could new structures and process for governance of global technologies look like? Why has the tech industry’s self-regulation culture persisted? Do the same traditional drivers for public policy, such as politics of harmonization and path dependency in policy-making, still sufficiently explain policy outcomes in this space? As new technologies and their applications spread across the globe in uneven ways, how and when do they create forces of change from unexpected places?

These are some of the questions that we hope to address in the Technology and Global Change section through articles that tackle new dimensions of the global landscape of designing, developing, deploying, and assessing new technologies to address major challenges the world faces. Understanding these processes requires synthesizing knowledge from a range of different fields, including sociology, political science, economics, and history, as well as technical fields such as engineering, climate science, and computer science. A crucial part of understanding how technology has created global change and, in turn, how global changes have influenced the development of new technologies is understanding the technologies themselves in all their richness and complexity—how they work, the limits of what they can do, what they were designed to do, how they are actually used. Just as technologies themselves are becoming more complicated, so are their embeddings and relationships to the larger social, political, and legal contexts in which they exist. Scholars across all disciplines are encouraged to join us in untangling those complexities.

Josephine Wolff is an associate professor of cybersecurity policy at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. Her book You’ll See This Message When It Is Too Late: The Legal and Economic Aftermath of Cybersecurity Breaches was published by MIT Press in 2018.

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Modern Technologies’ Impact on Human Lives Essay

Article by kocielnik et al. (2018), article by reddy et al., (2021), article by rogers et al., (2019).

Modern technologies allow people to collect a lot of data about their activities, for example, distance traveled and similar information. However, a gap remains in analyzing and using this data for personal learning. Therefore, it is necessary to involve users in reflection, which expands self-knowledge, improves goal setting and self-control in correcting behavior. Existing capabilities as diaries in applications imply that reflection will occur on its own after the data collected is provided. However, conversations can better trigger thinking, and in the context of technologies – mini-dialogues. Kocielnik et al. (2018) check how a dialogue system based on different levels of learning theory (Noticing, Understanding, and Future Actions) will help users reflect in fitness applications. To achieve their goal, they conducted several workshops and field deployment.

Creating dialogs to encourage reflection is a complex challenge for developers. Twelve people participated in the author’s workshops to make the reflective questions. They discussed reflection on their daily activity and proposed reflexive questions of three levels (Noticing, Understanding, and Future Actions) in three categories – personal goals, goals and personal data usage, other people’s goals, and data. In addition to generating 275 questions, the authors noted the limitations of existing systems that they seek to avoid – focus on notifications rather than reflection, boredom due to repetitions, demotivation, and platform inconvenience.

As a result, authors developed Reflection Companion implemented as a PHP server and working through SMS sent at a random time, controlled through the Twilio API. Moreover, they applied a two-step minidialogues structure, personalization, and daily reflection sessions to stimulate reflection. After field deployment, 19 people participated in interviews and praised the engagement, performance of the system, and reflection triggers. They noted an increase in awareness, an understanding of own actions, and motivation.

Intellectual things are increasingly becoming part of people’s lives. Reddy et al. (2021) believe that consequently, a desire to talk with these things appears. At the moment, conversational agents (CA), such as Google Assistant, act as intermediaries for communication between people and things, but established programs limit such interactions. The authors applied a more-than-human approach, Thing Perspective exercise, and speculative Thing Interview to highlight the ways and themes in the relationship between people and things surrounding them. The authors endowed voices with several items from their daily use and conducted interviews speaking on their behalf. Determined topics can inspire the future development of things with conversational capabilities. After the interview, the authors reflected process and recorded fragments of the conversation, which they considered the most significant.

The topics that arose during the interview process form the basis of the article. The topic Breaking silences notes that things already communicate in a certain way with their owners, for example, the sounds of boiling for a kettle and a coffee maker, emphasizing that communication occurs not only through voice. This fact inspired the authors to reflect on the capabilities of CAs in the use of sounds, their amplification, and other aspects. Navigating proximity explores the relationship between an object’s place and its perception by a person; for example, the earpiece feels like part of the ear. The spatiality and distributing agency determines that things and people can have perceptual gaps; for instance, doors could know who knocks on them while a person does not know. Altered presence raises the question of how much things could judge and influence their owners.

The theme of Permanence/Impermanence inspired the authors to think about the memory and durability of CAs. Finally, World as perceived by the thing raises the question of how things could know the world around us. Thus, the authors shifted focus from how items with voice interfaces can be developed to the relationship between people and things during their research. However, the themes raised may be the basis of future research on the design of everyday items.

Technology has significantly changed human lives, and there is debate about whether changes are positive or harmful. Rogers et al. (2019) explore the role of design research in protecting the positive effects of technology by focusing on voice-enabled Internet. Human-computer interaction (HCI) researchers and designers can play a significant role in presenting modern technologies to the public and in future interactions to regulate them. The authors’ goal is to create a design research film that will simultaneously explore opportunities and protect a healthy approach to creating voice-driven products.

At various stages of their work, the authors shared ideas, made a film to implement ideas, and evaluated its potential impact. The main themes that the authors wanted to emphasize are

• The consent model is dead: it draws attention to the problems of using any voice to activate devices.
• Visibility is at the crux of trust: it indicates the need to display processes in devices controlled by voice.
• Behind every object is an ideology: consumers should understand the ideologies behind the technology.
• Our bodies are our sensors: explores how the approach of technology to people will affect them.

Wanting to cover the themes, make films more entertaining, show the possibilities of artificial intelligence education, and demonstrate the importance of both trust in technology and media literacy, the authors created three concepts for films:

• Eddi is a voice assistant who learns from his owner.
• Karma is a voice assistant that uses personal data for calls on behalf of the owner.
• Sig is an assistant whose identity can be changed by the owner.

A film with plots based on these ideas was presented at the London Design Festival. Thus, through exciting content, the authors drew attention to some exciting problems related to the use of voice-controlled technologies. They also presented potential directions for technologies development that protect a healthier voice-enabled Internet approach.

Kocielnik, R., Xiao, L., Avrahami, D., & Hsieh, G. (2018). Reflection companion: a conversational system for engaging users in reflection on physical activity . Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies , 2 (2), 1-26.

Reddy, A., Kocaballi, A. B., Nicenboim, I., Søndergaard, M. L. J., Lupetti, M. L., Key, C., Speed, C., Lockton, D., Giaccardi, E., Grommé, F., Robbins, H., Primlani, N., Yurman, P., Sumartojo, S., Phan, T., Bedö, V., & Strengers, Y. (2021). Making everyday things talk: Speculative conversations into the future of voice interfaces at home . Extended Abstracts of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems , 1-16.

Rogers, J., Clarke, L., Skelly, M., Taylor, N., Thomas, P., Thorne, M., Larsen, S., Odrozek, K., Kloiber, J., Bihr., P., Jain, A., Arden, J., & von Grafenstein, M. (2019). Our friends electric: Reflections on advocacy and design research for the voice enabled internet. Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 1-13.

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• Technology Essay

Essay on Technology

The word "technology" and its uses have immensely changed since the 20th century, and with time, it has continued to evolve ever since. We are living in a world driven by technology. The advancement of technology has played an important role in the development of human civilization, along with cultural changes. Technology provides innovative ways of doing work through various smart and innovative means. 

Electronic appliances, gadgets, faster modes of communication, and transport have added to the comfort factor in our lives. It has helped in improving the productivity of individuals and different business enterprises. Technology has brought a revolution in many operational fields. It has undoubtedly made a very important contribution to the progress that mankind has made over the years.

The Advancement of Technology:

Technology has reduced the effort and time and increased the efficiency of the production requirements in every field. It has made our lives easy, comfortable, healthy, and enjoyable. It has brought a revolution in transport and communication. The advancement of technology, along with science, has helped us to become self-reliant in all spheres of life. With the innovation of a particular technology, it becomes part of society and integral to human lives after a point in time.

Technology is Our Part of Life:

Technology has changed our day-to-day lives. Technology has brought the world closer and better connected. Those days have passed when only the rich could afford such luxuries. Because of the rise of globalisation and liberalisation, all luxuries are now within the reach of the average person. Today, an average middle-class family can afford a mobile phone, a television, a washing machine, a refrigerator, a computer, the Internet, etc. At the touch of a switch, a man can witness any event that is happening in far-off places.  

Benefits of Technology in All Fields: 

We cannot escape technology; it has improved the quality of life and brought about revolutions in various fields of modern-day society, be it communication, transportation, education, healthcare, and many more. Let us learn about it.

Technology in Communication:

With the advent of technology in communication, which includes telephones, fax machines, cellular phones, the Internet, multimedia, and email, communication has become much faster and easier. It has transformed and influenced relationships in many ways. We no longer need to rely on sending physical letters and waiting for several days for a response. Technology has made communication so simple that you can connect with anyone from anywhere by calling them via mobile phone or messaging them using different messaging apps that are easy to download.

Innovation in communication technology has had an immense influence on social life. Human socialising has become easier by using social networking sites, dating, and even matrimonial services available on mobile applications and websites.

Today, the Internet is used for shopping, paying utility bills, credit card bills, admission fees, e-commerce, and online banking. In the world of marketing, many companies are marketing and selling their products and creating brands over the internet. 

In the field of travel, cities, towns, states, and countries are using the web to post detailed tourist and event information. Travellers across the globe can easily find information on tourism, sightseeing, places to stay, weather, maps, timings for events, transportation schedules, and buy tickets to various tourist spots and destinations.

Technology in the Office or Workplace:

Technology has increased efficiency and flexibility in the workspace. Technology has made it easy to work remotely, which has increased the productivity of the employees. External and internal communication has become faster through emails and apps. Automation has saved time, and there is also a reduction in redundancy in tasks. Robots are now being used to manufacture products that consistently deliver the same product without defect until the robot itself fails. Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning technology are innovations that are being deployed across industries to reap benefits.

Technology has wiped out the manual way of storing files. Now files are stored in the cloud, which can be accessed at any time and from anywhere. With technology, companies can make quick decisions, act faster towards solutions, and remain adaptable. Technology has optimised the usage of resources and connected businesses worldwide. For example, if the customer is based in America, he can have the services delivered from India. They can communicate with each other in an instant. Every company uses business technology like virtual meeting tools, corporate social networks, tablets, and smart customer relationship management applications that accelerate the fast movement of data and information.

Technology in Education:

Technology is making the education industry improve over time. With technology, students and parents have a variety of learning tools at their fingertips. Teachers can coordinate with classrooms across the world and share their ideas and resources online. Students can get immediate access to an abundance of good information on the Internet. Teachers and students can access plenty of resources available on the web and utilise them for their project work, research, etc. Online learning has changed our perception of education. 

The COVID-19 pandemic brought a paradigm shift using technology where school-going kids continued their studies from home and schools facilitated imparting education by their teachers online from home. Students have learned and used 21st-century skills and tools, like virtual classrooms, AR (Augmented Reality), robots, etc. All these have increased communication and collaboration significantly. 

Technology in Banking:

Technology and banking are now inseparable. Technology has boosted digital transformation in how the banking industry works and has vastly improved banking services for their customers across the globe.

Technology has made banking operations very sophisticated and has reduced errors to almost nil, which were somewhat prevalent with manual human activities. Banks are adopting Artificial Intelligence (AI) to increase their efficiency and profits. With the emergence of Internet banking, self-service tools have replaced the traditional methods of banking. 

You can now access your money, handle transactions like paying bills, money transfers, and online purchases from merchants, and monitor your bank statements anytime and from anywhere in the world. Technology has made banking more secure and safe. You do not need to carry cash in your pocket or wallet; the payments can be made digitally using e-wallets. Mobile banking, banking apps, and cybersecurity are changing the face of the banking industry.

Manufacturing and Production Industry Automation:

At present, manufacturing industries are using all the latest technologies, ranging from big data analytics to artificial intelligence. Big data, ARVR (Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality), and IoT (Internet of Things) are the biggest manufacturing industry players. Automation has increased the level of productivity in various fields. It has reduced labour costs, increased efficiency, and reduced the cost of production.

For example, 3D printing is used to design and develop prototypes in the automobile industry. Repetitive work is being done easily with the help of robots without any waste of time. This has also reduced the cost of the products. 

Technology in the Healthcare Industry:

Technological advancements in the healthcare industry have not only improved our personal quality of life and longevity; they have also improved the lives of many medical professionals and students who are training to become medical experts. It has allowed much faster access to the medical records of each patient. 

The Internet has drastically transformed patients' and doctors’ relationships. Everyone can stay up to date on the latest medical discoveries, share treatment information, and offer one another support when dealing with medical issues. Modern technology has allowed us to contact doctors from the comfort of our homes. There are many sites and apps through which we can contact doctors and get medical help. 

Breakthrough innovations in surgery, artificial organs, brain implants, and networked sensors are examples of transformative developments in the healthcare industry. Hospitals use different tools and applications to perform their administrative tasks, using digital marketing to promote their services.

Technology in Agriculture:

Today, farmers work very differently than they would have decades ago. Data analytics and robotics have built a productive food system. Digital innovations are being used for plant breeding and harvesting equipment. Software and mobile devices are helping farmers harvest better. With various data and information available to farmers, they can make better-informed decisions, for example, tracking the amount of carbon stored in soil and helping with climate change.

Disadvantages of Technology:

People have become dependent on various gadgets and machines, resulting in a lack of physical activity and tempting people to lead an increasingly sedentary lifestyle. Even though technology has increased the productivity of individuals, organisations, and the nation, it has not increased the efficiency of machines. Machines cannot plan and think beyond the instructions that are fed into their system. Technology alone is not enough for progress and prosperity. Management is required, and management is a human act. Technology is largely dependent on human intervention. 

Computers and smartphones have led to an increase in social isolation. Young children are spending more time surfing the internet, playing games, and ignoring their real lives. Usage of technology is also resulting in job losses and distracting students from learning. Technology has been a reason for the production of weapons of destruction.

Dependency on technology is also increasing privacy concerns and cyber crimes, giving way to hackers.

FAQs on Technology Essay

1. What is technology?

Technology refers to innovative ways of doing work through various smart means. The advancement of technology has played an important role in the development of human civilization. It has helped in improving the productivity of individuals and businesses.

2. How has technology changed the face of banking?

Technology has made banking operations very sophisticated. With the emergence of Internet banking, self-service tools have replaced the traditional methods of banking. You can now access your money, handle transactions, and monitor your bank statements anytime and from anywhere in the world. Technology has made banking more secure and safe.

3. How has technology brought a revolution in the medical field?

Patients and doctors keep each other up to date on the most recent medical discoveries, share treatment information, and offer each other support when dealing with medical issues. It has allowed much faster access to the medical records of each patient. Modern technology has allowed us to contact doctors from the comfort of our homes. There are many websites and mobile apps through which we can contact doctors and get medical help.

4. Are we dependent on technology?

Yes, today, we are becoming increasingly dependent on technology. Computers, smartphones, and modern technology have helped humanity achieve success and progress. However, in hindsight, people need to continuously build a healthy lifestyle, sorting out personal problems that arise due to technological advancements in different aspects of human life.

How has technology changed - and changed us - in the past 20 years?

Remember this? Image:  REUTERS/Stephen Hird

.chakra .wef-1c7l3mo{-webkit-transition:all 0.15s ease-out;transition:all 0.15s ease-out;cursor:pointer;-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;outline:none;color:inherit;}.chakra .wef-1c7l3mo:hover,.chakra .wef-1c7l3mo[data-hover]{-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;}.chakra .wef-1c7l3mo:focus,.chakra .wef-1c7l3mo[data-focus]{box-shadow:0 0 0 3px rgba(168,203,251,0.5);} Madeleine Hillyer

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Stay up to date:, technological transformation.

• Since the dotcom bubble burst back in 2000, technology has radically transformed our societies and our daily lives.
• From smartphones to social media and healthcare, here's a brief history of the 21st century's technological revolution.

Just over 20 years ago, the dotcom bubble burst , causing the stocks of many tech firms to tumble. Some companies, like Amazon, quickly recovered their value – but many others were left in ruins. In the two decades since this crash, technology has advanced in many ways.

Many more people are online today than they were at the start of the millennium. Looking at broadband access, in 2000, just half of Americans had broadband access at home. Today, that number sits at more than 90% .

This broadband expansion was certainly not just an American phenomenon. Similar growth can be seen on a global scale; while less than 7% of the world was online in 2000, today over half the global population has access to the internet.

Similar trends can be seen in cellphone use. At the start of the 2000s, there were 740 million cell phone subscriptions worldwide. Two decades later, that number has surpassed 8 billion, meaning there are now more cellphones in the world than people

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At the same time, technology was also becoming more personal and portable. Apple sold its first iPod in 2001, and six years later it introduced the iPhone, which ushered in a new era of personal technology. These changes led to a world in which technology touches nearly everything we do.

Technology has changed major sectors over the past 20 years, including media, climate action and healthcare. The World Economic Forum’s Technology Pioneers , which just celebrated its 20th anniversary, gives us insight how emerging tech leaders have influenced and responded to these changes.

Media and media consumption

The past 20 years have greatly shaped how and where we consume media. In the early 2000s, many tech firms were still focused on expanding communication for work through advanced bandwidth for video streaming and other media consumption that is common today.

Others followed the path of expanding media options beyond traditional outlets. Early Tech Pioneers such as PlanetOut did this by providing an outlet and alternative media source for LGBTQIA communities as more people got online.

Following on from these first new media options, new communities and alternative media came the massive growth of social media. In 2004 , fewer than 1 million people were on Myspace; Facebook had not even launched. By 2018, Facebook had more 2.26 billion users with other sites also growing to hundreds of millions of users.

While these new online communities and communication channels have offered great spaces for alternative voices, their increased use has also brought issues of increased disinformation and polarization.

Today, many tech start-ups are focused on preserving these online media spaces while also mitigating the disinformation which can come with them. Recently, some Tech Pioneers have also approached this issue, including TruePic – which focuses on photo identification – and Two Hat , which is developing AI-powered content moderation for social media.

Climate change and green tech

Many scientists today are looking to technology to lead us towards a carbon-neutral world. Though renewed attention is being given to climate change today, these efforts to find a solution through technology is not new. In 2001, green tech offered a new investment opportunity for tech investors after the crash, leading to a boom of investing in renewable energy start-ups including Bloom Energy , a Technology Pioneer in 2010.

In the past two decades, tech start-ups have only expanded their climate focus. Many today are focuses on initiatives far beyond clean energy to slow the impact of climate change.

Different start-ups, including Carbon Engineering and Climeworks from this year’s Technology Pioneers, have started to roll out carbon capture technology. These technologies remove CO2 from the air directly, enabling scientists to alleviate some of the damage from fossil fuels which have already been burned.

Another expanding area for young tech firms today is food systems innovation. Many firms, like Aleph Farms and Air Protein, are creating innovative meat and dairy alternatives that are much greener than their traditional counterparts.

Biotech and healthcare

The early 2000s also saw the culmination of a biotech boom that had started in the mid-1990s. Many firms focused on advancing biotechnologies through enhanced tech research.

An early Technology Pioneer, Actelion Pharmaceuticals was one of these companies. Actelion’s tech researched the single layer of cells separating every blood vessel from the blood stream. Like many other biotech firms at the time, their focus was on precise disease and treatment research.

While many tech firms today still focus on disease and treatment research, many others have been focusing on healthcare delivery. Telehealth has been on the rise in recent years , with many young tech expanding virtual healthcare options. New technologies such as virtual visits, chatbots are being used to delivery healthcare to individuals, especially during Covid-19.

Many companies are also focusing their healthcare tech on patients, rather than doctors. For example Ada, a symptom checker app, used to be designed for doctor’s use but has now shifted its language and interface to prioritize giving patients information on their symptoms. Other companies, like 7 cups, are focused are offering mental healthcare support directly to their users without through their app instead of going through existing offices.

The past two decades have seen healthcare tech get much more personal and use tech for care delivery, not just advancing medical research.

The World Economic Forum was the first to draw the world’s attention to the Fourth Industrial Revolution, the current period of unprecedented change driven by rapid technological advances. Policies, norms and regulations have not been able to keep up with the pace of innovation, creating a growing need to fill this gap.

The Forum established the Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution Network in 2017 to ensure that new and emerging technologies will help—not harm—humanity in the future. Headquartered in San Francisco, the network launched centres in China, India and Japan in 2018 and is rapidly establishing locally-run Affiliate Centres in many countries around the world.

The global network is working closely with partners from government, business, academia and civil society to co-design and pilot agile frameworks for governing new and emerging technologies, including artificial intelligence (AI) , autonomous vehicles , blockchain , data policy , digital trade , drones , internet of things (IoT) , precision medicine and environmental innovations .

Learn more about the groundbreaking work that the Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution Network is doing to prepare us for the future.

Want to help us shape the Fourth Industrial Revolution? Contact us to find out how you can become a member or partner.

In the early 2000s, many companies were at the start of their recovery from the bursting dotcom bubble. Since then, we’ve seen a large expansion in the way tech innovators approach areas such as new media, climate change, healthcare delivery and more.

At the same time, we have also seen tech companies rise to the occasion of trying to combat issues which arose from the first group such as internet content moderation, expanding climate change solutions.

The Technology Pioneers' 2020 cohort marks the 20th anniversary of this community - and looking at the latest awardees can give us a snapshot of where the next two decades of tech may be heading.

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License and Republishing

World Economic Forum articles may be republished in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Public License, and in accordance with our Terms of Use.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.

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Essay on Technology – A Boon or Bane for Students

500+ words essay on technology for students.

In this essay on technology, we are going to discuss what technology is, what are its uses, and also what technology can do? First of all, technology refers to the use of technical and scientific knowledge to create, monitor, and design machinery. Also, technology helps in making other goods that aid mankind.

Essay on Technology – A Boon or Bane?

Experts are debating on this topic for years. Also, the technology covered a long way to make human life easier but the negative aspect of it can’t be ignored. Over the years technological advancement has caused a severe rise in pollution . Also, pollution has become a major cause of many health issues. Besides, it has cut off people from society rather than connecting them. Above all, it has taken away many jobs from the workers class.

Familiarity between Technology and Science

As they are completely different fields but they are interdependent on each other. Also, it is due to science contribution we can create new innovation and build new technological tools. Apart from that, the research conducted in laboratories contributes a lot to the development of technologies. On the other hand, technology extends the agenda of science.

Vital Part of our Life

Regularly evolving technology has become an important part of our lives. Also, newer technologies are taking the market by storm and the people are getting used to them in no time. Above all, technological advancement has led to the growth and development of nations.

Negative Aspect of Technology

Although technology is a good thing, everything has two sides. Technology also has two sides one is good and the other is bad. Here are some negative aspects of technology that we are going to discuss.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

With new technology the industrialization increases which give birth to many pollutions like air, water, soil, and noise. Also, they cause many health-related issues in animals, birds, and human beings.

Exhaustion of Natural Resources

New technology requires new resources for which the balance is disturbed. Eventually, this will lead to over-exploitation of natural resources which ultimately disturbs the balance of nature.

Unemployment

A single machine can replace many workers. Also, machines can do work at a constant pace for several hours or days without stopping. Due to this, many workers lost their job which ultimately increases unemployment .

Types of Technology

Generally, we judge technology on the same scale but in reality, technology is divided into various types. This includes information technology, industrial technology , architectural technology, creative technology and many more. Let’s discuss these technologies in brief.

Industrial Technology

This technology organizes engineering and manufacturing technology for the manufacturing of machines. Also, this makes the production process easier and convenient.

Creative Technology

This process includes art, advertising, and product design which are made with the help of software. Also, it comprises of 3D printers , virtual reality, computer graphics, and other wearable technologies.

Information Technology

This technology involves the use of telecommunication and computer to send, receive and store information. Internet is the best example of Information technology.

FAQs on Essay on Technology

Q.1 What is Information technology?

A –  It is a form of technology that uses telecommunication and computer systems for study. Also, they send, retrieve, and store data.

Q.2 Is technology harmful to humans?

 A – No, technology is not harmful to human beings until it is used properly. But, misuses of technology can be harmful and deadly.

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Descriptive Essay: Technology In Our Lives

There are lots of types of technology in our life. Here are a few that actually make our lives better to the point where if we could run them on renewable energy then the world would be a better place.

The Microwave

This is the most efficient piece of technology in your kitchen. Microwave radiation is directed at the food, which heats up all of the most metallic elements of your food and makes it hot. The radiation goes away the millisecond the device stops, and all of it is trapped in the microwave box (or else it would heat your kitchen).

The way it works is why your microwave acts a little weird sometimes. For example, how I may put in an empty plate from one set and it heats up to near scalding in seconds, and you put in a plate from another and it takes 20 minutes to warm up the edges a little.

If you put pure distilled water in to your microwave then you can heat it up to the point of making it explosive because the microwaves have no metallic pieces to warm up in the usual fashion. For your information, the metallic pieces in your food are the minerals you need to live, not to mention the fact that salt is a metal.

The washing machine

Some complain that it is a waste of water, but it is actually less of a waste than hand washing your clothes (unless you do a really bad job of washing them). Plus, if you dry your clothes on radiators then you are going to spend a lot more money drying them than you do if you have a higher speed spin function on your washer. The amount of time that the washing machine saves us is enough to live our lives twice.

The blender or food processor

They both chop up food in to a fine paste if needed and even though they are not commonly seen in every kitchen, they are actually very important. Humans are omnivores, but we have lost the ability to process vegetation efficiently. We get the most out of our food if we chew it well because once it reaches the stomach there is little it can do. It is why sweet corn may come out whole when you pass your food. A food processor acts like a highly efficient set of teeth and frees all the fiber and nutrients we could ever get from vegetables.

Frankly, the modern kitchen has a lot of devices that make the world a better place. The three mentioned are just an example of three of the best, but even the fact that the common fridge saves the country billions of dollars in spoilage every year is simply astounding. The freezer in your house makes it so that you can buy food months in advance. There are many countries where even the notion of food in advance is alien to them, which just goes to show how lucky we are to have been born in the first world.

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Table of Contents

Ways technology improves our daily life, influence of technology, improved quality of life , downsides to consider, positive and negative impact of technology on modern businesses, has technology improved our lives.

As it is rightly said that necessity is the mother of invention, all technologies that have emerged and thrived so far have been invented to meet the needs of society. As newer technology is introduced, it certainly reflects the very essence of a population’s needs and wants. Nowadays, technologies and societies are inseparable. It is like a cycle, where each one significantly affects the other. As humans evolve and their needs and wants change over time, advanced and modern technology come to the rescue to fulfill these needs. 

Has the use of technology improved our lives? Join us as we address in our Java Course . We examine how different facets of contemporary life are impacted by technology through perceptive debates and useful examples. We'll examine how technology has transformed every aspect of our lives, from communication to healthcare, and offer a comprehensive grasp of both its advantages and disadvantages.

Technology is molding our society today. Following are some of the ways it is improving our daily lives. 

• Business Efficiency: A tidal wave of exponential technological progress is sweeping away the business world. Today’s marketplace offers more than different ways to improvise, adapt and leap forward by means of the available technology. To enhance the customer experience, the utilization of business analytics has proved to be beneficial. Such business tools, which are powered by technology, have taken the aspects of business to different heights. Personalized messaging and user behavior analysis has also helped businesses to mark their fruitful presence in the marketplace. 
• Expedited Communication: The only certain answer to how technology has improved our lives is, it has dramatically changed the way we communicated with each other. It has led to the birth of several modes of electronic communication such as smartphone communication and social media. We have reached a certain point in civilization where instant and glitch-free communication is easily available. Speed is undeniably the significant improvement that technology has brought forth for communication. Instant and easy communication is now possible from the comfort of our homes.      
• Advanced Lifestyle: With technology at its helm, societies have been reshaped throughout history. Technology has played a pivotal role in the way humans behave and operate in the world. Technological improvements around us are a continuous thing. New advancements are emerging and it is surely impacting our lifestyles. Our lives are now radically different compared to earlier decades, thanks to technology. The touch of technology and its presence is felt everywhere such as commuting, farming, education, etc. On the other hand, the Internet of Things (IoT) has made our lives super easy. Smart homes and advanced electronic gadgets, through the medium of IoT, have drastically improved our daily routines. It has made several aspects of life easier.  
• Information Accessibility: Technology has heavily influenced the way we transfer and access information. Nowadays, any information is available at the tip of our fingertips. We constantly find answers and gather information from the internet. Technology is readily accessible to us, both in terms of its authenticity and relevance, only if one knows how to browse better. To speak of the advantages of technology, information accessibility could be considered as the best one.   

The influence of technology in our daily lives is far more widespread than we actually think. It is growing and progressing at a rapid pace. It has changed the way we access resources. It has also changed the way we learn new things. Nowadays, people tend to rely on technology for everything. Whenever we need to contact someone, we can just text that person instantly. Earlier, it was much slower with letters and meetings. This is the way technology has disrupted the way we communicate. Our requirements and technical demands continue to grow, which is eventually pushing the boundaries of technology and the way it influences us. 

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We have reached a point where it is difficult to imagine life without technology. It has considerably changed the quality of life. By seeping into every aspect of our life, technology has changed the way we behave and operate. From communication and transport to healthcare and connectivity, technology has enhanced our lives for the better. The best part is that it is ever-evolving by facilitating more advanced features. For instance, we have come far from traditional audio calls to instant messaging and facetime. Not to forget, technology has come to rescue during the pandemic. When the world was in lockdown mode, video calling and putting out words on the internet has paved the way for connecting with each other. Technology helped us stay together by living apart. Whilst the pandemic was fading away, work from home situation was possible only due to technology which further rolled the wheels of economy. 

Since the dotcom boom, over time, the world is increasingly getting access to the internet. It is disrupting many lives and the way they interact with their daily matters. It all started with industrial automation which made work easy and efficient, further it penetrated into every aspect of life. Ever since it is changing every dimension of life. 

Though technology has changed things up, there are some downsides to consider. There are some pros and cons of technology. Privacy is the foremost concern that technology has brought forth. Digital technology means that enormous quantities of data are being collected and stored. This includes private information with regards to individuals and organizations. It is a challenging task to keep this information safe and secure. A single mistake or voluntary breach of data means that the private information landing into the hands of hackers, terrorists, etc. 

On the other hand, real-life contact has been diminishing away since the advent of technology. People tend to meet and greet online rather than interacting in-person. This ultimately results in isolation and a sense of disconnect from society. Several studies have suggested that lesser interaction with the society has further brought forth various kinds of mental health issues such as depression and social anxiety. 

With a slew of benefits of technology, there are some other downsides to consider such as job insecurity due to increasing automation, addiction to gadgets, less experience to life events, etc.  

There are so many pros of technology. Technology is continuously redefining the way organizations conduct their businesses by being more visible over the internet, accessible to customers. It is dramatically enhancing internal modus operandi as well as services they offer. Strategies concerning the execution of digital technologies have gained some ground of immense popularity over the last decade owing to the perks that businesses have been privileged to enjoy as a result of adapting to such technologies. By incorporating digital solutions, avant-garde tools and technologies, organizations have seamlessly managed processes, expedited production cycles and have been able to offer high quality products and improved customer experience whilst cutting down cost and boosting productivity and profitability. Technology has made organizations competitive with its sweeping impact.  

Positive and negative impacts are two sides of the same coin. Face to face communication is decreased due to the availability of audio and video calls. This influences decision making and can lead to misunderstanding. Also, organizational data is sensitive. If someone hacks into the system, it can lead to irreparable loss. Dependency is another issue which can hamper productivity.   

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While technology has certainly increased our standard of living in numerous ways, it has also brought a whole host of new challenges and dangers that must be addressed. Our lives are now more interconnected than ever, yet this can come at the cost of our privacy and security. Cybersecurity threats are now commonplace and can cause serious disruption to our lives, while issues such as cyberstalking, sexting, and cyberbullying have all become issues that must be addressed by responsible adults and children alike.

Technology has changed our lives in countless ways, from the way we communicate with each other to the way we watch TV. As technology advances, more and more of our daily lives are being impacted.

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Essay on Role Of Technology

Students are often asked to write an essay on Role Of Technology in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Role Of Technology

Introduction.

Technology plays an important part in our lives. From the moment we wake up until we go to bed, we use different types of technology. It helps us do many things faster and easier. For example, we use phones to talk to people far away, cars to travel, and computers for work or study.

Education and Technology

Technology helps a lot in education. Students can learn from anywhere with the help of the internet. They can find information about anything on search engines like Google. Also, teachers can use projectors and computers to teach lessons in an interesting way.

Healthcare and Technology

Technology also helps in healthcare. Doctors use machines to find out what is wrong with a patient’s body. They can also do surgeries with the help of robots. This makes the treatment safer and quicker. Patients can also use apps to keep track of their health.

Communication and Technology

Technology has made communication easier. We can talk to anyone in the world using mobile phones or video calls. We can also send messages or emails in just a few seconds. This helps us stay connected with our loved ones.

In conclusion, technology plays a big role in our lives. It makes things easier and faster. It helps in education, healthcare, and communication. So, we should use technology in a good way to make our lives better.

250 Words Essay on Role Of Technology

Technology plays a key role in our lives. It is like a helper that makes our tasks easier. From the moment we wake up until we go to sleep, we use different technologies. For example, the alarm clock that wakes us up, the car that takes us to school, and the computer we use for homework.

Role in Education

Technology is very important in schools. It helps students learn better. For example, computers and the internet give us a lot of information. We can find answers to our questions quickly. Also, teachers use technology to make lessons more interesting.

Role in Communication

Technology has changed the way we talk to each other. We can now talk to people who are far away from us. We can do this through emails, video calls, and social media. We can even send pictures and videos to our friends and family.

Role in Health

Technology also helps doctors to treat patients. They use machines to find out what is wrong with a person. Then, they use different tools to make the person feel better. For example, x-ray machines help doctors see inside our bodies.

In conclusion, technology is very important. It helps us in many ways. It makes our lives easier and better. We should learn how to use it wisely. We should also remember that while technology is helpful, we should not forget to enjoy the simple things in life.

500 Words Essay on Role Of Technology

Technology is like a magic wand that has transformed our lives in many ways. From the way we learn, work, shop, and even play, technology has brought about big changes. This essay will talk about the role of technology in different parts of our lives.

Learning and Education

In the world of education, technology has made learning easier and fun. Students can now access a world of knowledge right from their homes. They can learn new things through educational videos, online classes, and even virtual reality. It has also made it easier for teachers to share information and monitor student progress.

In the healthcare sector, technology has played a key role in saving lives. Doctors can now use advanced machines to diagnose diseases early and accurately. They can even perform complex surgeries with the help of robotic arms. Moreover, with mobile health apps, people can keep track of their health and fitness.

Communication

Technology has made the world a smaller place by improving communication. We can now talk to people living in different parts of the world in real-time through video calls. We can also share our thoughts and ideas with millions of people through social media platforms.

Work and Business

In the business world, technology has made work easier and more efficient. Companies can now store and manage huge amounts of data with ease. They can also reach out to their customers easily through online marketing. Moreover, technology has created new job opportunities in fields like programming, digital marketing, and data analysis.

Entertainment

Technology has also changed the way we entertain ourselves. We can now watch movies, listen to music, and play games on our smartphones. Moreover, with virtual reality, we can even experience games and movies in a more immersive way.

In conclusion, technology has a big role to play in our lives. It makes our lives easier, helps us learn new things, keeps us healthy, and entertains us. As we move forward, technology will continue to evolve and bring about even more changes. We must learn to use it wisely and make the most of it.

In this essay, we have seen how technology impacts different areas of our lives. From making learning fun and easy to improving healthcare, making communication easier, making work more efficient, and changing the way we entertain ourselves, technology has a role in every part of our lives. As we move forward, technology will continue to evolve and bring about even more changes. We must learn to use it wisely and make the most of it.

Word Count: 500

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The Morning

How tiktok changed us.

The app’s videos have become a fixture in the lives of tens of millions of Americans.

By Sapna Maheshwari

She covers media and technology.

In the coming days, Congress may advance a bill to ban TikTok or force its sale to an American company. Politicians in both parties call the app a threat to national security. But its reach is felt most acutely in our culture. Since it first arrived in the United States in 2018 (after merging with another app), its 15-second gulps of entertainment have become a fixture in the lives of tens of millions of Americans — including those who’ve never opened the app.

The engine that powers this juggernaut is TikTok’s recommendation algorithm, which figures out what users like and populates a customized feed of addictive videos. It’s called the For You Page, or FYP. It was not built to connect people with friends, the way Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat were. It was built to entertain.

As the app fights the most serious threat yet to its autonomy, my colleagues and I explored the ways that its innovation has reshaped American lives . In today’s newsletter, I’ll spotlight a few of them.

Hollywood. The film industry at first ignored and feared TikTok. But it eventually embraced the platform as a marketing tool for a new generation of moviegoers. The Sony romantic comedy “Anyone But You” drew a weak $8 million in ticket sales over Christmas weekend, my colleague Brooks Barnes, who covers Hollywood companies, writes. But “the movie turned into a full-fledged hit ($219 million) after TikTok users (at the urging of Sony) began making videos of themselves re-enacting the credit sequence.” The app is virtually a “ticket-selling machine,” he writes.

Schools. A few schools have removed bathroom mirrors because so many students were leaving class to film TikTok videos there. These clips constitute “a TikTok genre, dating back at least five years, in which students use school bathrooms as film sets for dance routines , lip-syncing clips or critiques of unclean lavatories,” my colleague Natasha Singer, who covers tech use in schools, writes. School bathrooms have also become “arenas to stage, film and post videos of bullying, physical assaults on schoolmates and acts of vandalism.”

News. For 14 percent of American adults, TikTok is a regular news source, up from 3 percent in 2020. People who don’t have traditional backgrounds in journalism, akin to bloggers for the TikTok era, aggregate and share information in snappy videos. Traditional news outlets are scrambling to catch up — and fretting about accuracy and context. Organizations including The New York Times are also making short-form videos in which reporters talk to the camera about their stories, the TikTok way.

Cooking. Recipes got a makeover on TikTok, as creators depart from static images and step-by-step instructions. My colleague Becky Hughes, NYT Cooking’s social media editor, writes that traditional recipes have given way to looser concepts. That has helped create trends like eggs fried in a puddle of pesto , sandwich fillings chopped into a homogenous mixture and mini pancakes served like cereal , she says. “The most shareable recipes are the ones that you can watch once, then turn around and make — no measurements, bake times or reading needed,” she writes. “Just dump, stir, like, follow, repeat.”

Our story also chronicles how TikTok has prompted self-diagnoses of ADHD and replaced window shopping at the mall. My colleagues looked at the app’s knack for spreading conspiracy theories, its fight with Taylor Swift’s record label and the secrecy around its algorithm. We hope you’ll spend some time on these articles, even if it’s only to check how many TikTok “microtrends,” such as glazed-donut skin and sleepy-girl mocktails, you’ve heard of.

More on TikTok

What happens to a niche product when TikTok makes it viral? It lands at Walmart .

Political debate is rife on the app. But few politicians have a substantial presence there.

TikTok has turned to nuns, veterans and ranchers to argue that it’s a force for good.

THE LATEST NEWS

Iran and israel.

Israel struck Iran early today , Israeli and Iranian officials said. It appears to be the Israeli military’s first retaliation for the Iranian attack on Israel this past week.

Iranian and Israeli television played down the strike, as did some officials. A newsreader in Iran described the attack as “not a big deal.” Israeli officials said the limited response was intended to avoid escalation .

Iranian officials said that small drones had hit a military base near the city of Isfahan, in central Iran. A separate group of drones was shot down about 500 miles further north, the officials said. The Israeli military has declined to comment.

Isfahan, a tourist hub, is also a center of missile production and the site of four small nuclear facilities.

Read what we know about the attack .

Israel-Hamas War

Hamas rejected Israel’s latest offer to pause the fighting in Gaza in exchange for the release of hostages, the C.I.A. director said.

The U.S. vetoed a U.N. resolution that would have supported admitting Palestine as a full member state.

Reaction to the War

The police arrested more than 100 pro-Palestinian students at Columbia University for violating rules about when and where protests can take place.

A disrupted honors ceremony, a shattered window, an injured security guard: Leaders of universities, worried about a breakdown in civility, are more tightly enforcing campus rules about demonstrations.

More International News

Heavy rains fell in Afghanistan and Pakistan , killing more than 130 people. The authorities have forecast more flooding and rainfall.

Voting in India’s election begins today. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who is expected to win a third term, has remained popular even as he has become more autocratic .

Millions of girls in Africa will not receive promised doses of the HPV vaccine because of manufacturing issues at the drugmaker Merck.

Trump on Trial

All 12 jurors have been seated for Donald Trump’s criminal trial in Manhattan. The judge, Juan Merchan, said he hoped opening arguments would begin on Monday.

Earlier in the day, Merchan excused two jurors who had previously been chosen, including one who worried about her identity becoming public.

More on Politics

A committee vote advanced a foreign aid bill for Ukraine and Israel . The move underscored Speaker Mike Johnson’s reliance on Democrats.

A federal judge rejected Trump’s attempt to delay a group of civil lawsuits over the Jan. 6 Capitol riot that were brought by police officers and members of Congress.

The U.S. sent dozens of migrants back to Haiti as deportation flights restarted.

The Biden administration blocked plans in Alaska to build an industrial road through a national park to reach a large copper deposit.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s campaign qualified for the ballot in Michigan , a swing state. Democrats fear he’ll siphon votes from President Biden.

Jimmy Kimmel weighed in on Johnson’s troubles with his conference .

Other Big Stories

Apple removed the Meta-owned apps WhatsApp and Threads from its app store in China on Beijing’s orders.

Emergency room visits related to heat illness increased in the U.S. in 2023 , the warmest year on Earth in a century and a half.

Hilary Cass, the pediatrician who led a review of gender transition treatments in England, had the courage to follow the evidence , David Brooks writes.

How would Americans react to the O.J. verdict today? The answer highlights our racial progress since the 1990s, John McWhorter writes.

Here are columns by Michelle Goldberg and Pamela Paul on Columbia’s response to protests and Frank Bruni on the Trumps’ marriage .

MORNING READS

Like it’s 1989: In the 1980s and ’90s, Dafydd Jones’s pictures captured the parties of Manhattan’s rich and powerful .

Social Q’s: “Should I be loyal to my father or to my dying uncle? ”

In Manhattan: A Nigerian chess master is trying to break the record for the longest chess marathon . And he’s playing the games in Times Square.

Processing: After a hard loss, an e-bike helped a writer embrace life again .

Rebrand: Manischewitz, a staple in American Jewish households, is using a fresh look and new recipes to court a new generation.

Lives Lived: The guitarist and singer Dickey Betts was a guiding force in the Allman Brothers Band for decades, helping to define Southern rock. He died at 80 .

N.H.L.: The board of governors approved the Arizona Coyotes’ move to Salt Lake City .

College football: Colorado coach Deion Sanders scoffed at the number of Buffaloes players entering the transfer portal , asking, “What are we losing?”

ARTS AND IDEAS

Taylor Swift’s new album, “The Tortured Poets Department,” is out today, and fans who want to own a physical copy have no shortage of options. On Swift’s website, you can buy vinyl, CD, and even cassette versions. She offered autographed LPs, though those quickly sold out. One retailer is selling four separate CDs, each with a different bonus track.

As streaming cuts into the sales of records, many artists are trying to lift revenues by marketing albums as collectibles . “The music industry is trying to figure out how to maximize superfans and give them more of what they want,” Dan Runcie, an industry analyst, said.

More on Swift

“She sounds confused, bitter, raging, vulnerable, yet more gloriously chaotic than we’ve ever heard her before”: Read Rolling Stone’s review of the album .

Swift’s album arrived amid a promotional blitz . Sirius XM added a Swift radio station, Apple Music used her lyrics in a word game, and Spotify erected a Swift-branded “library installation” in L.A.

Swift’s album has come out nearly a month after Beyoncé’s new release. Rather than competing over the charts, the two superstars are giving each other some space .

THE MORNING RECOMMENDS …

Top matzo, bread or bagels with Joan Nathan’s homemade whitefish salad .

Listen to new songs from Olivia Rodrigo and others .

Upgrade your backyard .

Relax and let a robot vacuum do the work.

Take our news quiz .

Here is today’s Spelling Bee . Yesterday’s pangram was inkblot .

And here are today’s Mini Crossword , Wordle , Sudoku , Connections and Strands .

Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow.

Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox . Reach our team at [email protected] .

Sapna Maheshwari reports on TikTok, technology and emerging media companies. She has been a business reporter for more than a decade. Contact her at [email protected] . More about Sapna Maheshwari

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About 1 in 5 U.S. teens who’ve heard of ChatGPT have used it for schoolwork

Roughly one-in-five teenagers who have heard of ChatGPT say they have used it to help them do their schoolwork, according to a new Pew Research Center survey of U.S. teens ages 13 to 17. With a majority of teens having heard of ChatGPT, that amounts to 13% of all U.S. teens who have used the generative artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot in their schoolwork.

Teens in higher grade levels are particularly likely to have used the chatbot to help them with schoolwork. About one-quarter of 11th and 12th graders who have heard of ChatGPT say they have done this. This share drops to 17% among 9th and 10th graders and 12% among 7th and 8th graders.

There is no significant difference between teen boys and girls who have used ChatGPT in this way.

The introduction of ChatGPT last year has led to much discussion about its role in schools , especially whether schools should integrate the new technology into the classroom or ban it .

Pew Research Center conducted this analysis to understand American teens’ use and understanding of ChatGPT in the school setting.

The Center conducted an online survey of 1,453 U.S. teens from Sept. 26 to Oct. 23, 2023, via Ipsos. Ipsos recruited the teens via their parents, who were part of its KnowledgePanel . The KnowledgePanel is a probability-based web panel recruited primarily through national, random sampling of residential addresses. The survey was weighted to be representative of U.S. teens ages 13 to 17 who live with their parents by age, gender, race and ethnicity, household income, and other categories.

This research was reviewed and approved by an external institutional review board (IRB), Advarra, an independent committee of experts specializing in helping to protect the rights of research participants.

Here are the  questions used for this analysis , along with responses, and its  methodology .

Teens’ awareness of ChatGPT

Overall, two-thirds of U.S. teens say they have heard of ChatGPT, including 23% who have heard a lot about it. But awareness varies by race and ethnicity, as well as by household income:

• 72% of White teens say they’ve heard at least a little about ChatGPT, compared with 63% of Hispanic teens and 56% of Black teens.
• 75% of teens living in households that make $75,000 or more annually have heard of ChatGPT. Much smaller shares in households with incomes between $30,000 and $74,999 (58%) and less than $30,000 (41%) say the same.

Teens who are more aware of ChatGPT are more likely to use it for schoolwork. Roughly a third of teens who have heard a lot about ChatGPT (36%) have used it for schoolwork, far higher than the 10% among those who have heard a little about it.

When do teens think it’s OK for students to use ChatGPT?

For teens, whether it is – or is not – acceptable for students to use ChatGPT depends on what it is being used for.

There is a fair amount of support for using the chatbot to explore a topic. Roughly seven-in-ten teens who have heard of ChatGPT say it’s acceptable to use when they are researching something new, while 13% say it is not acceptable.

However, there is much less support for using ChatGPT to do the work itself. Just one-in-five teens who have heard of ChatGPT say it’s acceptable to use it to write essays, while 57% say it is not acceptable. And 39% say it’s acceptable to use ChatGPT to solve math problems, while a similar share of teens (36%) say it’s not acceptable.

Some teens are uncertain about whether it’s acceptable to use ChatGPT for these tasks. Between 18% and 24% say they aren’t sure whether these are acceptable use cases for ChatGPT.

Those who have heard a lot about ChatGPT are more likely than those who have only heard a little about it to say it’s acceptable to use the chatbot to research topics, solve math problems and write essays. For instance, 54% of teens who have heard a lot about ChatGPT say it’s acceptable to use it to solve math problems, compared with 32% among those who have heard a little about it.

Note: Here are the  questions used for this analysis , along with responses, and its  methodology .

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American Culture in our Lives

This essay about American culture portrays it as a dynamic and diverse entity, likened to a kaleidoscope of varying influences and traditions. It highlights the blend of innovation and preservation within American society, from technological advances to cultural rituals. The narrative acknowledges historical scars and ongoing struggles for equality, emphasizing the resilience and adaptability of American culture. Overall, it reflects on the complexity of American identity, celebrating both unity and division as integral to the American experience.

How it works

American culture is akin to a vast kaleidoscope, where every turn reveals a new pattern, a fresh hue, and an unexpected blend of influences. It’s a mosaic crafted over centuries, shaped by the hands of countless individuals, each adding their own brushstroke to the canvas of American identity.

From the snow-capped peaks of the Rockies to the swaying palms of Miami Beach, American culture echoes the diversity of its landscape. It’s a symphony composed of myriad notes, from the haunting melodies of Appalachian folk music to the pulsating rhythms of hip-hop born on the streets of New York City.

Each note tells a story, weaving together the tapestry of American experience.

At the heart of American culture lies its restless spirit of innovation. From the cotton gin to the iPhone, from the Model T to the Tesla, Americans have always been at the forefront of technological advancement. It’s a culture that thrives on experimentation, fueled by a relentless drive to push the boundaries of what’s possible.

But American culture is not just about progress; it’s also about preservation. It’s about honoring the traditions passed down through generations, from the powwows of Native American tribes to the Fourth of July parades in small-town America. It’s about cherishing the land that sustains us, from the amber waves of grain to the purple mountain majesties.

Yet, for all its richness and diversity, American culture is not immune to division and discord. The scars of history, from the Trail of Tears to the internment camps of World War II, linger like shadows in the collective memory. The struggle for equality and justice is an ongoing battle, fought on the streets of Ferguson, in the boardrooms of Wall Street, and in the chambers of Congress.

But even in the face of adversity, American culture endures. It’s a culture defined by resilience, by the ability to bounce back from hardship and emerge stronger than before. It’s a culture that celebrates the underdog, the maverick, the outsider—the ones who dare to defy the odds and chart their own course.

In the end, American culture is a reflection of the human experience itself—a complex tapestry of triumph and tragedy, of innovation and tradition, of unity and division. It’s a culture that defies easy categorization, that resists being confined to a single definition. It’s a culture that invites exploration, that rewards curiosity, that celebrates the endless possibilities of the American dream.

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American Culture In Our Lives. (2024, Apr 22). Retrieved from https://papersowl.com/examples/american-culture-in-our-lives/

"American Culture In Our Lives." PapersOwl.com , 22 Apr 2024, https://papersowl.com/examples/american-culture-in-our-lives/

PapersOwl.com. (2024). American Culture In Our Lives . [Online]. Available at: https://papersowl.com/examples/american-culture-in-our-lives/ [Accessed: 22 Apr. 2024]

"American Culture In Our Lives." PapersOwl.com, Apr 22, 2024. Accessed April 22, 2024. https://papersowl.com/examples/american-culture-in-our-lives/

"American Culture In Our Lives," PapersOwl.com , 22-Apr-2024. [Online]. Available: https://papersowl.com/examples/american-culture-in-our-lives/. [Accessed: 22-Apr-2024]

PapersOwl.com. (2024). American Culture In Our Lives . [Online]. Available at: https://papersowl.com/examples/american-culture-in-our-lives/ [Accessed: 22-Apr-2024]

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