Everywhere we go today, it is a common sight to see people with heads bowed down, eyes etched to a screen and fingers furiously working tapping away. Technology is increasingly integrates integrated in our society, serving almost all functions from entertainment to business. It Technology is what allows us humans to keep up with the highly complex and fast-paced world that we have today. However, there has been increasing concerns with the wide usage of technology with regards to its potential to control us. While some wish to believe that technology today is still taking over humans, I the more rational crowd believes that many people remain reigning as masters of technology.
Many may say that it is not uncommon to see people distracted by the many things that technology has to offer. Technology has caused a democratisation and easy access to information, and entertainment material. This causes has caused people to be highly engrossed with their electronic gadgets. Furthermore, with technology comes great power of the internet to be able to figure out the user’s likes, dislikes, allowing to come up with suitable recommendations. This fixates the user’s attention on technology even more and leads to the vicious cycle. Humans, suggest the critics, have become subservient to technology. They have gone going on to various lengths at our disadvantage to attain it, but end up only to be distracted by it.
However, It is usually only the youth that are affected by this issue of slavery to technology, having been exposed to it all their lives. They have experienced technology in every minute of their lives. Furthermore, citing only internet technology as a form of human slavery to technology is very limited. In many other cases, humans remain the masters of technology, using it as a tool to achieve success.
Technology is still used as a tool by many for communication and achievement of personal and professional goals. It is used by scientists in making discoveries, students to learn, teachers to teach, artists to gain fans, elderly to catch up on news, architects and workers for construction, etcetera. Technology is ubiquitous, playing a role in almost everything we use aiding in almost our every action. It makes our work easier or empowers us to do better. For example, scientists were able to able discovery the Higgs Boson with a very complex machine known as Large Hadron Collider. The LHC was used as a mere tool by the scientists to make discoveries.Another example is the use of online tools such as Khan Academy by students to enhance their learning process. Technology serves a wide audience and continues serving as a tool in today’s world.
Technology remains a mere tool and has not made humans slaves as it is still not able to achieve what a human can. Many argue that the plaguing of technology, and taking over tasks taken by humans show that it is able to work better than humans, possibly making humans its slaves where technology no longer work for humans but humans work for technology. However, in today’s society, technology is still unable to function the way a human is able to. Though it is probably able to take on many jobs of humans, it is unable to behave like a human especially those which require decisions that involve consideration of political relationships, communication with fellow humans, etcetera. Technology has not rendered humans useless or slaves but has just changed the important skills that humans need to have. Therefore, humans still remain the masters of technology.
While technology is evident in every single task in our lives, we
remain in complete control today. Technology
is used as an aid, not as a crutch. Though
there is a possibility that the equation might change in the future with
research projects such as Elon Musk’s Neuralink project to link human brains
and computers, we are eons away from
realizing such far fetched dreams. Humans
are not slaves to technology today. Therefore, I disagree that One would be hard pressed to accept that humans are slaves to technology.