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Adrin Alexander Salinas Gmez

Ms. Olga Rodrguez
Communicative English IV-419
February 19, 2014.
I. Technology: A useful tool
A, Daily life usage
Technology, a variation from science, sometimes is an answer of some
of our human problems. First of all, technology is defined as the application
of science, especially to industrial and commercial objectives. (Technology
Terms, 2014). How can this be useful in our life? As we know, technology has
changed our life in different ways, depending on each situation. We can have
several examples and remember them.
The advance of technology has made for some great discoveries, but
at the same time has dramatically changed how we live our day-to-day
lives. We are no longer paying postages to send out birthday cards. An
e-card, text, or email has that covered. Online dating has been around
for a while, and many people are using Google to get see if their date
is a dud. We are no longer using the traditional route of sharing
information. Social networks now allow us to share pretty much
anything, anywhere, anytime. Our TV experience has evolved. We are
no longer prisoner to a TV set. We can now watch what we want,
where we want, how we want. Gone are the days of picking up the
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phone or heading over to someones house to chat. (7 Ways
Technology Has Changed Our Lives Forever, 2013).

Smartphones and the internet have replaced traditional chats with
virtual ones. We now dont need the use of books in every situation.
Electronic devices have made it easier for us to carry our books around
without breaking our backs. Parenting has now expanded to the internet. (7
Ways Technology Has Changed Our Lives Forever, 2013).

As we just saw, technology had really improved our ways of living.
Every day when we have a specific problem, maybe trying to communicate to
a faraway place, traveling from a place to another, doing some homework,
etcetera, technology practically saves our day. People might think that
technology isnt a good choice for our daily life, but now we can infer, with
each of the examples we saw, that it is really useful in our daily life.

B. Medical Usage
As we also know, technology has some varieties. Technology isnt only
a useful tool for our usage, and, if it were so, it wouldnt be as amazing as it
is. Technology might also help in other fields of our lives. One of those fields
is the medical usage. When we are sick, what is the first think we do?
Obviously, we visit the doctor, isnt it? Doctors might start evaluating your
symptoms, and using some technological devices they probably will know
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your sickness. The medical field has always brought together the best and
brightest of society to help those in need. From treating cancer and delivering
babies to dealing with heart attacks, doctors have developed technology and
improved techniques. (The Blog, 2010).



















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II. Technology as a problem
A. Addiction
How can technology be a problem? Technology has such a powerful hold
on us. Its easy to indulge in all day long, and unlike alcohol and drugs, it
doesnt have high perceived costs. Yet the damage is being done inside our
brains, as the constant interruptions erode our self-control, increase stress
and obliterate work-life balance. (Harri, 2013).
The recent society uses technology in every way. Technology is a
very useful tool, and we already saw some examples of how technology
acts in our days. But, can technology be also considered as a human
addiction? Every single situation and opportunity that people have with
technology, they actually use it even if its not necessary. We can see how
technology, with its own development over the world and its evolution
since 20
th
century, has dominated our minds and our society.
Technology addiction isnt that simple. Eventually, some other types
of addictions can be considered as easier to deal with because they
have medications and special treatments but, how can we treat our
technology addiction? People can start thinking that its much easier to
turn off your Smartphone for a while than to turn off a cigarette, but its
much more complicated than that. If you want to turn off your Smartphone,
your iPad, your iPhone, or another technological device (referring from the
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usage of our TV up to our usage of videogames) you must need to have a
great willpower.
What are the consequences that we can achieve if we introduce
ourselves as technological devices addicted persons? Well, technology
addiction might affect your life in certain ways; here we can saw some of
them. Technology distorts human social interactions; people have lost the
ability to actually converse with one another face to face. Resisting
Facebook and texting compares with turning down a Martini for an
alcoholic. A lack of concentration results in errors being made and a loss
of sense of time can end up in burnt meals or children left at school,
forgotten to be picked up. Dishonesty increases as access to illegal music,
games, movies, etc. is so much easier and addicts often lie about the
amount of time spent online. (Harri, 2013)
B. Expensive Prices
Technology also acts as a problem for society, because the prices of each
technological device arent really characterized for being cheap. Many people
that is impressed by technology spend lots of cash when buying those devices
that are part of their dreams. Many times the person starts spending his or her
money and they stop buying those things that are essential for their lives. For
example, a father whos in love with technology might prefer buying his dreamed
smartphone instead of buying a new briefcase for his job. A mother might prefer
to buy a bigger refrigerator and a bigger TV for the hall instead of buying enough
food for her family.
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Technological devices prices had surprisingly increased during this
last , and if the device is new and one of the most modern ones, it might
also affect its price. We might probably think that this isnt a really problem
or a really good excuse to see technology as a real problem but the results
we got are the followings: if a person without enough money wants to buy
his favorite smartphone, and he is also addicted to technology (as we saw
in the last page), that person will do anything as possible to get that money
and buy the device he wanted since the beginning. The actions that the
person might do could be fatal for the rest of the people, for example,
stealing, getting black money, scamming, or even stealing the device
from a market or from an innocent person.
Another way to see how technology prices really affect us as
society, we can also take the example of the medical technology devices.
We also saw in the last pages that technology is hugely used in medical
views. These days for any doctor who uses expensive technologies, it is
easy to see where this evaluation will lead us in our new era of cost
concerns in medicine. (Fisher, 2013). What would happen if a sick
person hasnt enough money for a surgery that needs to apply an
expensive device? That why technology price is also a problem for our
society.



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III. Technology controlling us
A. Social Networks
What are social networks? Social network is an online community of
people with a common interest who use a website or other technologies to
communicate with each other and share information, resources, etcetera.
(Dictionary, 2014). Another definition for the social networks could be the next
one: one of the reasons why society is really addicted and dependent to
technology. This is because most of the time we are using a technological
device, we are wasting our time in a social network.
There are many social networks that really control us, and now-a-
day the networks that are most of the time used are the followings: Twitter,
Facebook, WhatsApp, Hotmail, etcetera. Each of them has different
applications and different functions, but they have in common that they
can be considered as one of the important causes of the society been
controlled by technology.
Years ago, technology did not allow the opportunity to interact with
others in the manner it does today; therefore, people had to go outside
their comfort zones to meet new individuals. Social networking sites, on
the other hand, now allow people to simply sit in front of a computer and
stare at it for hoursdisregarding face to face interaction. (Bates, 2013),
The way of how social networks are now controlling the world and how
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fast they spread throw out the world is amazing, we are no more able to
talk face to face or to meet each other as individuals, we now just take our
smartphone or laptop, start Facebook and meet new people, which is now
controlling us and is something we need to do each day.

B. Dependence
Technological devices can also control us in the way that now-a-day the
society depends on the technology. We can see that a person cant survive a
single weekend without his or her smartphone, iPad, etcetera. This might be a
really huge problem because we can infer that we dont know the freedom, we
are now tied to technology and we really depend on it. We can see an example of
how people depends on a huge and popular technological device, the computer:
Are we too dependent on computers? The answer is yes! In todays
society, people use computers in business, education, and in the
entertainment world. Almost everything we do and every aspect of our life is
affected by modern technology with computers at the top of the list. People
obsess over computers. The computers do everything for us so we dont have
to use our brains anymore. People are losing their jobs due to the computers
moving into the workplace. They are making society dumber by the day.
Society today is too dependent on computers because we use them for
everything, we dont have the social interaction that we once had, and
technology makes us lazy. (Thorton, 2012)

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Hendricks, Drew. "How Technology Is Changing the Medical and Health Care
Field." The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 14 May 2013. Web. 5 Mar. 2014.
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/drew-hendricks/how-technology-is-
changin_b_3273542.html>.

"7 Ways Technology Has Changed Our Lives Forever." Babble RSS. N.p., n.d. Web. 5
Mar. 2014. <http://www.babble.com/tech/7-ways-technology-has-changed-our-lives-
forever/#how-we-read>.

"Technology: The New Addiction?" Cigna. 04 2014. 04 2014
<http://apps.cignabehavioral.com/web/basicsite/bulletinBoard/technologyNew

Harri. "Technology Addiction: The Effects on Society" Business Productivity Specialists.
06 2013. 04 2014 <http://www.getorganised.co/2013/06/technology-addiction-the-
effects-on-society/>.

Fisher, Wes. "Weighing the cost of technology advances in medical devices" KevinMD.
07 2013. 04 2014 <http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2013/07/weighing-cost-technology-
advances-medical-devices.html>.


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Introduction
Many points of view can be taken in our society, for every kind of situation (social
problems, global warming, machines, human tools, etcetera) and it depends on the
advantages or disadvantages of such situation. Technology, for example, has been a
really talked topic since it has developed our world environment. We can say that
technology had really helped the world development in different situations, but also it
has affected to our societies. Technological devices in Mexico are the most abundant
and recognized advances of technology in the recent centuries, and we can see this
from big situations to basic situations, for example having new machines for medical
usages, and having new smartphones which we use in our daily life. Seeing this topic
from another point of view, technological devices has also affected our social
environment, with addictions and dependence, having the simple but truly case of how
many time we waste using our social networks, games, messaging, chatting, etcetera.
Technological devices in Mexico had really helped our society in many different ways
and can be considered as a really useful tool for us, but it also has disadvantages and
tends to control us.