<p>Assignment: Is technology dangerous, or does it provide a way to solve our problems? Plan and write an essay in which you develop your position on this issue. Support your point of view with reasoning and examples taken from your reading, studies, experience, or observations.</p>
<p>While modern technology has given humanity many benefits, it has caused more problems than it has solved. In the last century, amazing advances in medicine and public health have extended the average human life span. However, the resulting population explosion has had all kinds of problems. Furthermore, these problems have led to new dangers with which we may not be able to cope, and which might lead to the end of our way of life.</p>
<pre><code> Medical technologies, such as antibiotics and anasthesia, and better public health standards have extended life. While that might seem like a good thing, the worlds population is out of control. All of these people are competing for the same resources, which is leading to increased conflict. For example, two wars have already been fought in the middle east at least in part over oil. Wars over
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<p>resources will only increase as population rises. Furthermore, the increasing population is driving deeper into uninhabited areas, encountering new diseases, like HIV and Ebola. As international travel becomes more widespread, these diseases break out and cause new epidemics against which medicine is sometimes powerless. Finally, cutting-edge genetic technologies seem to be as dangerous as they are beneficial.</p>
<pre><code> In fact, its not true that an increasing number of people are competing for the same resources. The amount of some resources is actually shrinking. Again, oil is a good example. At some point soon, we will run out of this fuel which supports our entire economy. Similarly, the worlds forests are being cut down at an alarming rate. As more fuel is burned, global warming is actually changing the Earths climate. Finally, as population rises and uses up resources, environmental destruction is killing off large number of species.
If all this werent bad enough, some dangers facing our world stem directly from technology. First, weapons of mass destruction are spreading to other countries, and possibly even to terrorists. Second, these terrorists already use some of our other technologies, such as the Internet and airplanes, against us. As we work to battle the spread of terrorism, we are using sophisticated surveilance technologies. Will the use of these technologies lead to the end of our free way of life? Or will terrorists use other technologies, such as weapons of mass destruction, to cause us even greater harm?
It seems that technology creates new problems as it solves old ones. Perhaps humankind should consider pausing for a moment and thinking about whether weve matured to the point where we can handle the technologies weve created.
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<p>Thank you :-)</p>