The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of Computer Technology, Essay Example

The universal presence of computer technology has brought with it an equally immense range of issues. Even as people globally embrace each new technology, concerns are raised as to how truly beneficial reliance on these technologies is: “We depend so much on computers that, when something around us goes wrong, it is normally because of a computer glitch” (Salomon, 2006, p. 10). Then, the sedentary nature of computer work brings up health questions: “…The high prevalence of a sedentary, inactive lifestyle (is) a huge threat to general health” (Kirch, 2008, p. 851).  The very information computers allow access to also create a concern that people will increasingly let them “do their thinking for them”. Such issues notwithstanding, two realities are evident: the technology is here to stay, and mankind has already derived enormous benefits from it. Computer technology is, ultimately, a resource, and how effective or damaging that resource is depends entirely on how people employ it.

Computer Technology as a Fixture in Modern Life

In historical terms, and employing traditional time frames of vast societal change, the advent of computer technology is unprecedented. The industrial revolution, depending upon which nation is examined and the degree of expansion, occurred over periods ranging from several decades to over two centuries. The automobile and film industries exploded far more dramatically, and each within a matter of ten to twenty years. Their impacts were far-reaching and resilient, yet they were, and remain, adjuncts to living and not the pervasive element within it that computer technology has become.

Since approximately the early 1980s, and accelerating dramatically in the 1990s, computer technology has become a foundational component in every aspect of modern life. More and more people rely upon email and text messaging, rather than telephones, to communicate. Business and trade, from the smallest shop to the most monolithic corporations, conduct its commerce through computer systems, and globally. National defense systems employ sophisticated computers to plan and execute every conceivable maneuver or exercise, in war and in peacetime. As regards education: “Practically every developed country now has a detailed ‘educational ICT strategy’ based around the broad aim of encouraging and supporting schools’ use of computers, the Internet, and other digital technology” (Selwyn, 2010,  p. 23).

Moreover, and just as influentially, the computer is a comfort factor in the average life. People turn to it for virtually every form of entertainment, from music to the films largely produced with computer imaging and technology. Social and dating networks also flourish as computer offerings, and the relatively recent days when men and women would not consider meeting someone encountered online are, essentially, obsolete. In serving as complex, multifaceted channels of communication and sources of limitless information and products, computer technology is now completely interwoven in the fabric of living.

Proliferation

The extraordinary speed with which computer technology imbedded itself into the world’s affairs is none the less startling when the actual arc of the rise is examined. The technology, though in its infancy and still centered around the concept of the “electronic brain”, gained momentum as far back as the 1960s. The introduction of the microprocessor in the early 1970s, quickened the pace, particularly as increasing amounts of application abilities and information could be contained within smaller and smaller pieces of hardware.

During this period, computer technology was still very much reserved for the fields of business and science. It would take the introduction of the personal computer, then referred to as the “microcomputer”, to truly revolutionize the new industry. In 1977, the Commodore Personal Electronic Transactor (PET), was king of the market, generating sales in the tens of thousands. The accomplishment would be short-lived: “By 1983, Apple had moved from its original headquarters in a Silicon Valley garage into huge new corporate buildings…IBM had already sold over a million PCs” (Edwards, 1997, p. 327).

The extraordinary spike in computer ownership, beginning in the 1980s and reaching fruition ten years later, owed its existence to something other than sophisticated, microchip technology. It needed the Internet. People were typically impressed by what the new machines could do, but they were not actually attracted to them. “Why buy a computer if it didn’t offer some really enticing perks? That attitude began to change in the late 1980s when the Internet opened to public use” (Parson, Oja, 2008,  p. 496). The rest, as is said, is history, and rare today is the person without at least one personal computer device.

Global Dependence

In a very real sense, it is inherently within the nature of any technology to create the need for it. The paradox is explicable, particularly when mass usage follows on the heels of the technology’s introduction. As the invention of the printing press in the 1400s permitted a mass distribution of reading material, a previously largely illiterate public simultaneously learned to read and demanded more text. As the advent of the railroad systems vastly lessened traveling times, entire societal functions were altered to reflect, and then require, the new and faster transportation. The transition from unusual and new implement to vital component of living is brief, when the technology is greatly empowering.

Computer technology, more than any other innovation, embodies this process. It exceeds even the printing press in global impact by virtue of its innate ability to disregard physical boundaries…

References

Edwards, P. N. (1997.) The Closed World: Computers and the Politics of Discourse in Cold War America. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Kirch, W. (2008.) Encyclopedia of Public Health. New York, NY: Springer.

Parsons, J. J., and Oja, D. (2008.) New Perspectives on Computer Concepts, 11^th Edition. Boston, MA: Cengage Learning.

Salomon, D. (2006.) Foundations of Computer Security. New York, NY: Springer.

Selwyn, N. (2010.) Schools and Schooling in the Digital Age. New York, NY: Taylor & Francis.