Essay: New technology

INTRODUCTION
With the discussions of even though technology can be further advanced, is is fully necessary, there are many questions posed from that statement. New technology can be highly beneficial, from helping people’s health to increasing the safety and efficiency of transportation. Even with the social stigmas that new technology was given, it is the same case for technology in the past that was considered new, like the train, where people were afraid of their bodies melting from going at such fast speeds. With all the advancements in technology there are both positive and negative affects to them including technology in transportation, medicine, and social media.
FIRST CATEGORY: TECHNOLOGY IN TRANSPORTATION
Benefit: The increase in technology in transportation has positive affects on society. One of the innovations in transportation technology is the autonomous vehicles. Currently they are still being perfected but there is autopilot in several cars already. The future of transportation is not far with completely driverless cars. A positive affect that autonomous cars have on society is that they will “increases in a broad scope of users – elderly people, persons with disabilities” and help those people have easier accessibility to transportation. (potential economic cars) It “will dramatically reduce the number of car crashes caused by human error, which is responsible for over 90% of car accidents” and keep people safer and more protected. (potential economic cars) With self-driving cars, society will be heavily impacted and will also cause new businesses and jobs to be created. Because new needs will be created and transportation will become more efficient, there will be new jobs and easier access to them if someone does not live within close proximity to the occupation. With the accuracy of the autonomous cars on the road and the prevention of accidents, traffic will reduce and the time to get to places will also reduce. Because accidents will occur less often, that in turn will lead to billions of dollars saves in health care costs and insurance plans costs. The effects of driverless vehicles is very wide reaching and will dramatically change the way people live their lives and their new demands.
Consequences: Unfortunately there are negative affects of technological advancements in transportation. Autopilot does have downsides currently because it is still in a newer era. The technology is not fully autonomous and there is still human error involved in the equation causing there still to be accidents and death with the auto-drive feature enabled. There are several things that cannot be handled by self driving cars at the time. One of the things that the auto-pilot feature has trouble with is the problem of driving over bridges. This is due to the fact that with all the roads that have been mapped out, the car can be used to situations and be able to drive smoothly and comfortably, but “bridges don’t have many environmental cues like surrounding buildings” so it is more complicated for the car to understand its surrounding. (business insider) Weather is also a major toll on the technology of autumns cars. The camera and sensors that are used to detect and see the surrounding would be blocked by the snow, rain, or other weather object, causing there to be errors with the software and making it hard for them to see the lanes and other markings. It is also hard for driverless cars to be able to drive on roads that have no lane markings or very faint ones, because they cannot differentiate the lanes. These cars also cannot handle cities as well because of the unpredictable conditions that occur throughout the day. There are also certain things that the cars are not equipped to be able to do that humans can, such as merging into other lanes from the freeway or just roads.
SECOND CATEGORY: TECHNOLOGY IN MEDICINE
Benefit: Technology in medicine has several good things about it. With the technological advancements in surgery robotic surgery has since emerged and vastly affected medicine. It has many benefits to the patients including “shorter hospitalization [and] reduced pain and discomfort” (benefits of robotic surgery). With those facts it is also beneficial to society because robotic surgery is making hospitals more efficient and helping people with injuries heal faster. Because it causes people to not have to be in hospitals as long, there will be more space and less over-crowding. The robotic surgeries are not only beneficial to the patient but also to the doctor. It allows the doctor to have “greater visualization, enhanced dexterity, [and] greater precision” during surgeries (benefits of robotic surgery). This allows for better success rates and less complications within surgeries. It also helps to cut back on the human error of surgeries and makes them more faultless and specific. Robot surgery is not completely autonomous and requires a surgeon to operate the device so there is still room for error by the doctor like in normal surgery, but the robot helps reduce that risk. Robotic surgery is highly beneficial to medicine and continues to improve causing there to be even more reliability and help at the fingertips of highly trained surgeons.
Consequences: There are also several things that are negative about robotic surgery. The new technology of the robots mean that there is still fixes that can be made and that means there are complications. The robots have been used in millions of surgeries with low amounts of complications and this means that either there is a very high success rate or an incorrect amount of complications being reported. There is proof of the latter with the way of retrieving data not being reliable and consistent. This is because instead of reporting human caused errors while using the robots there are only reports of the device caused complications. This is ineffective because without reports of every surgery’s complications, it is hard to fully comprehend the errors that are reported and what improvements that should be made upon the robot for future uses. It has been “found [of] several incidents reported in the national news media that were not reported to the FDA until after the stories appeared in the press, even though the incidents took place long before the media exposure” meaning that the data can be seen as unreliable and the technology can also be seen as so. Unfortunately, because robotic surgery technology is still being created, there is not full reliability yet and people do not fully trust it yet.
THIRD CATEGORY: TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIAL MEDIA
Benefit: Because of the innovation to technology in the communication sector, social media has emerged. It has many positive effects on communications and society. It helps increase the ease of communication and makes it much easier to talk to people who live far away from each other and to stay connected. Social media helps people to maintain contact with their friends and family and to make people feel like they are still together and involved in eachother’s lives. It is also a good way for people to express themselves and to show off their talents to the world. It also has a positive effect on businesses because there is a new platform for advertising their company. There are many things that social media helps with in society including “strengthening people’s social ties [and] fostering political awareness” (infobaselearning). Social media also helps people to make new connections such as friendships or even a romantic relationship. It can help people to find new opportunities like becoming social media famous or to find a new career in music or dance. It is a great way to get exposure of yourself and talents to new people and people who can help make those dreams come true. It also helps people to become informed on topics that are prominent in the current times with trending stories. It helps people to learn about political movements and to be able to get involved in them in real life. Social media is beneficial to society.
Consequences: There are also negative components to social media. Because it is so widespread, everybody can be affected by social media. There are lots of people who are easily influenced by things and there has been certain movements that have been posted on social media that were negative and violent. There have been violent groups using social media platforms such as “ the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), an Islamic extremist group, to radicalize people in the United States and encourage them to perpetrate so-called lone wolf terrorist attacks” (infobaselearning). The younger generation of people have been widely affected by social media and most of them use social media everyday, multiple times a day, overusing and causing them to have an addiction to it. It causes people who use technology to constantly think about their follower, friends, or fans, and make them to feel bad about themselves of they don’t have enough likes or comments. It negatively affects people’s thinking and has also cause more mental disorders such as depression or eating disorders when seeing other people’s lives and comparing them to their own. Social media has several problems that can drastically affect society and cause harm to others.
CONCLUSION
Technology can be harnessed in several ways to maintain freedoms. People can make sure that even though technology may be controlling most aspects of life, it is not completely in control and without a stop button, so that people can make sure that they still hold the power in what happens in their life. Technology is beneficial overall and fully depends on how the person uses it. The future of humankind is immeasurable because it is constantly changing and expanding.
Works Cited
“Benefits of Robotic Surgery.” UC Health, 2018, uchealth.com/services/robotic-surgery/patient-information/benefits/. Accessed 22 Jan. 2019. In the article “Benefits of Robotic Surgery” (2018), the author talks about how the technology of robotic surgery is beneficial. It helps make the time spent in the hospital to lessen causing overcrowding of hospitals to not be as big of a problem and it causes there to be more space. It also benefits the patient with less pain and the time to recover is shorter. The patient also suffers less chance of infection, lessened blood loss, and less scarring. Robots in surgery benefit the surgeon as well causing there to be even more precision and increases the dexterity of the surgeon. Thanks to the robot is causes less damage and is beneficial to both the surgeon and the patient. It does not completely work on its own because the surgeon controls the robot. This makes sure that the robot does not malfunction and it does not cause surgeons to be less needed.
Muoio, Danielle. “6 scenarios self-driving cars still can’t handle.” Business Insider, 25 Aug. 2016, www.businessinsider.com/autonomous-car-limitations-2016-8#4-driving-in-cities-is-much-harder-for-autonomous-cars-than-cruising-on-the-highway-4. Accessed 22 Jan. 2019. In the article on Wired, “TESLA’S AUTOPILOT WAS INVOLVED IN ANOTHER DEADLY CAR CRASH”, written by Jack Stewart (2018), it gives a major example of the downside of self driving cars. Because of the new technology of the autopilot features of Tesla are still new, there are many hiccups in the technology. The crash happened when the autopilot feature was on and it slammed into the side of the highway. The cause of the crash was mainly due to human error because for Tesla autopilot it is needed to keep both hands on the steering wheel. The victim’s hand were not detected on the wheel in later reports and was given several warnings prior to put his hands on the wheel. The autopilot technology is not perfect and has several errors. Some of them include not being able to detect certain stationary objects, or when lanes spit or disappear. In total the technology of autopilot systems still has major flaws and negatively affect a driver’s experience on occasion.
“Social Media: Does social media have a positive impact on the world?” Info Base Learning, 5 Aug. 2016, icof.infobaselearning.com/icofprintarticle.aspx?articleID=1789aa&citation=mla. Accessed 22 Jan. 2019. In “Social Media: Does social media have a positive impact on the world?” published on Infobase Learning (2006), the author discusses the issues that social media has on society. They begin with talking about how smartphones have become much more widely accessible and many people use the Internet and social media. It is shown that social media can help people communicate better and help others but it also is seen to cause problems such as stress or loneliness. There are many social media apps that began to become created as the internet came along and are very important parts to peoples lives now a days. The negative impact of social media would include the influence of extremist groups pressuring uprisings and also oversharing your own lives. It also can cause people to feel bad about their lives because of constant comparison to other’s lives or cause people to become very self indulged. It is still determined that social media is necessary in society but taking break every once in a while is healthy.
Tomita, Hideaki. “Awaiting the realization of fully automated vehicles: Potential economic effects and the need for a new economic and social design.” voxeu.org, 17 Dec. 2017, voxeu.org/article/potential-economic-and-social-effects-driverless-cars. Accessed 31 Jan. 2019. In the scholarly article “Awaiting the realization of fully automated vehicles: Potential economic effects and the need for a new economic and social design” (2017), Hideaki Tomita describes what could happen to the economy and society due to the emergence of autonomous vehicles. It can help people and countries save money because of lowered accidents and lowered health care expenses. It also helps people who are disabled or elderly to have more accessibility to transportation and be able to go to other places much easier than before. This new technology of self driving cars will also help there to be the creation of new jobs and be able to fill the old jobs in transportation that had vacancies. The amount of car accidents will decrease drastically because of the lowered amount of human error and there will be less spending on fixing cars and other things. There are billions of dollars of saving involved when technology in transportation becomes fully implemented. There will be less congestion in parking lots and on the road and the traffic will decrease causing the transportation times to decrease as well. Autonomous vehicles will positively affect society in many ways and will be there to better communities.
Yates, Janelle. “Are robotic surgery complications underreported?” MDedge, 25 Oct. 2013, www.mdedge.com/obgyn/article/78046/surgery/are-robotic-surgery-complications-underreported. Accessed 31 Jan. 2019. In the article “Are robotic surgery complications underreported?” (2013), Janelle Yates talks about robotic surgery. An issue with robotic surgery is the research that was gathered is not completely reliable. There are some problems with the recording of the complications with the robots. If there is a malfunction with a robot it is not always reported. This leads to incorrect data reports and causes the statistics to not be as reliable. It is a problem for the patients and the doctors because it does not help them at all with improving the robots to fix whatever problems were not even reported. There have been deaths during the robot surgeries due to the fact of excessive bleeding mainly. There also are not very good reporting standards in the earlier stages of the robot technology. The do not record every complication that occurs during the surgery and they only record the device related complications. This causes there to be little contributions to the problems of the robots and makes it harder for them to understand how they can make them safer. With the problems robotic surgery is not always reliable and has the capability of malfunctioning or making it harder for the doctors to detect and feel certain things than without the robot.