It is so strange how much can change in just ten years, people can grow up, wars can be fought, and there is always the new and improved peeing doll; but what about technology. Ten years ago a computer with 10 GB of space was considered to be am amazing thing, the dot-com era had just started rolling. Today for the price that you paid for that 10 GB computer you now get a 250 GB laptop with wireless Internet and all the bells and whistles that you can think of. The Internet now seems growing at rate that is not even fathomable everyday. But is this all a good thing or is it leading us to a place where Steven Spielberg has already made at least twenty or thirty movies about?
As I sit here writing this paper I can’t help to notice that I am writing this on my laptop connected to a wireless Internet network watching clips from today’s soccer match, at the same time I am listening to music on my iPhone. I didn’t even realize how much technology I was using just right now; I think that we all take this all for granted, at least my age group. I am sure that the more mature people in this class look at computers, cell phones, laptops, and other technology related things as just a hassle.
This morning did you wake up and read the paper online, watch the news, turn on the radio, turn on even just a light? Here’s the crazy thing, all of those things require the same thing, electricity; without this now simple thing we would not be able to do billions of things that we do everyday. Without this trusty buddy that would hardly ever lead me down the wrong path, I would not have been able to go to China for as long as I did and be able to go out and do so many amazing things while I was there. So is this “technology” important, I would have to say that right now you still can get by without having to have a computer, but sooner than later most people will need to have a computer by the year 2015 according to futurists today though.
Right now as we speak there are millions of people downloading and watching movies on their computers instead of going down to the rental shop. One growing problem with all these wonderful things is that it makes life simpler and simpler for a person, which can lead to laziness and then even health problems from just sitting to long and starring at a screen. So in this way all this can actually be a bad thing for a person if they decide to totally rely on this and make a living all online I am sure that they will not be the fittest of people, but sadly without these totally online people we would not be able to have a the different technology at our finger tips that we do now. With today’s world though it seems like there is no that we cannot live without out it, because now everything has become too simple.
Less than two hundred years ago a new device changed the way that we communicated to this day, this device was the telephone. When the telephone was tested it proved that it was possible for long distance communication to happen over thousands of miles. Today we have cell phone which allow us to talk to someone around the world of little to nothing, but now people just look at this as part of life. Now in Germany in the major cities they have totally removed phone booths. Now this sounds strange but they had found that no one was using them anymore because of people having cell phones. Now in travel guides they actually tell you to buy pay-as-you-go cell phone instead of trying to find a phone both.
A simple telegram could cost up to a penny a word, which at the time was very expensive. Now days we have e-mail, with e-mail we are able to send whole pictures, music, and many other thing for almost no cost at all. There are thousands of sites that even provide free e-mail, sites like MSN, Google, and Yahoo are just a few of these sites.
So from the simplest of things like the wheel that now we have just expected to always be there, now we have things like computers, cell phones, and other thing that keep making our lives much more simpler. So when you think about it, could we have any of the things that we have today without peoples constant need to make things better and more efficient? So I think that day in and day out we always are going to need to be changing as technology changes.
