Technology is constantly evolving. Television was invented less than one hundred years ago. The internet came into our homes less than 40 years ago. These breakthroughs have enhanced our lives and they just keep coming, fast. A little too fast perhaps.
Boston Dynamics are currently developing lifelike robots, SpaceX launched the ‘Falcon Heavy’ rocket recently and autonomous cars are being tested in several countries. Technology is moving at a faster pace than ever, but it seems society is having trouble keeping up.
In 2017, sixteen percent of people in Ireland never used the internet, according to figures from the Central Statistics Office. If we are struggling to use technology that has been out for years, how can we possibly keep up with newer, more advanced ideas? The bottom line is, we won’t. We must find a way to understand and keep up with technology, or else we will get left behind.
Change that is too fast can be troublesome. Technology is advancing faster than society can handle, with only the people creating these advancements being able to understand them. If only an elite can keep up, the rest of us will become increasingly confused about how technology works. How will we ever be able to understand nanotechnology or quantum mechanics if they keep accelerating away from us?
“Technology is moving too fast for governments to keep up,” admitted Ken Gabriel, former chief of the US Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency in an interview with computingweekly.com.
With the like of Google and Facebook becoming so prominent in our everyday lives, some people now care more about their technology and social media profiles. As Albert Einstein once said; “It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.”
However, it’s not all bad. Technological advancements can be really beneficial to society. New medicines and treatments are being created, there are more efficient and eco-friendly ways of producing products, developments are improving education, the web is a new world full of knowledge, we have access to important things at the click of a button. Technology has become an integral part of humanities survival. There is so much innovation surrounding technology that is creating a world we couldn’t even have imagined just a few centuries ago.
Technology is helping society to progress. It has literally helped us reach the stars. As technology evolves, so does society, but at a lesser pace than most would like. A balance must be found to keep pushing technology forward while keeping us up there with it. Otherwise, humanity’s own genius will be the architect of its own downfall.
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is equivalent to magic,” said famous author Arthur C. Clarke.
I think it’s important to note that while technology can be terrifying, it can also be very exciting. Maybe what technology really needs is a ‘not-so-fast’ button.
Emer Handly
Image by SpaceNews.com