Assignment 2 - Benjamin Givens

The effect of technology is to make a task easier. This is the basis of engineering. This is the basis of computer science. This is the basis of invention. Technology is neither inherently good nor evil, but it can have both positive and negative effects on people personally as well as society as a whole. What we consider to be basic technologies such as refrigeration and roads weren't always basic and assumed. Obviously, the introduction of these things has improved the quality of life for those with access to them. In the same vein as roads, cars have improved positively affected all of our lives. They allow for people to visit places they couldn't have before and to take advantage of jobs and opportunities that would have been out of reach due to location before. Despite these benefits, the overuse of cars and the ability to get to places without walking has reduced our natural encouragement to exercise. With the introduction of the Information Age, this dichotomy of positive and negative has only expanded. Computing technology in phones, tablets, laptops, and desktops has served to improve our lives in ways that weren't predicted when they were created. Many people have described phones as their "second brains." Phones are extremely useful because their ability to store information is much more reliable than our own. Of course you could have carried around a pad of paper to remember information, as Getting Things Done by David Allen suggests, but phones are so much more convenient and powerful that it is easier to be efficient. However, phones have also impaired the ability for people to focus on tasks. Due to their multipurpose nature, they people are always a couple taps away from world news, a game, or a YouTube video. It is clear that technology is both a blessing and a curse.

Personally, technology has obviously helped me as provides me with tools that are extremely useful. If I want to send a message out about an upcoming meeting for Y-Club, I can easily accomplish this from my phone anywhere with Remind. Access to information both old and new has never been higher. I can read both The Wealth of Nations and the latest from The Verge about Google's new 360-degree view tour of national parks on my phone or desktop. In addition to the user side of technology, programming is much easier today than it was 20 years ago. With intellisense, free versions of Visual Studio, and vastly improved documentation and information on programming on the internet, programming even more difficult operations can be accomplished.

Of course, this does have a negative side. In school, phones have added a new dimension to classroom management that I have seen handled with various degrees of success. Even at home, focusing on homework is harder when distraction is so close. The device that has the math problems on it also has all the things I would rather be doing on it. It adds another layer of difficulty to doing the things that have to be done.

Twenty years ago, I wouldn't have access to do the things with technology that interest me. Programming on VI or Emacs with scattered documentation and very little resources available would have been incredibly frustrating. The way that I interact with my friends outside of school would be very different. Now, I hang out with my friends in a Skype call while playing games. I am able to keep up with both people at Dunbar and Henry Clay that I know and share similar interests. Physical location is irrelevant and there is always at least one person online that is around. Twenty years ago this would have been impossible. For one thing, if you had dial-up internet you couldn't have both voice communication and play online games at the same time. I obviously prefer what I have now.

Of course, predicting technology in the future will always make you look silly, as there is no way to know all the factors that will effect technological change and the individuals that will press that change. Nonetheless, I predict that self-driving cars will become the norm very quickly and that the computing power and improvement in tablets will make laptops obsolete. The introduction of improved wireless connections will vastly change the way people connect to the internet and allow for even higher levels of interconnection. Perhaps in vain, I hope that the FCC will come down with the hammer of justice on the internet providers attempting to take the benefits without the negatives of being a common carrier.