Technology Advancements Should Be Mitigated

Thank you for accepting. I believe that this is still the most controversial thought of all time: "Technology does more harm than good." Most of us deny the fact that technology does and will bring more harmful effects to humans than beneficial ones. I, myself, do not despise the technology itself but the accelerating advancements bother me so much. To define a few things, based on Google's definitions: "Technology - the application of scientific knowledge for practical purposes, especially in industry" "Advancement - development or improvement" "Mitigate - make less severe, serious, or painful" There two main factors that makes this motion agreeable by everybody present - people and environment. So talking about people, we consider 3 factors: behavior, health, and productivity. I concede to the fact that technologies bring a lot of positive effects to each person, both physically and mentally. It was really beneficial to all of us that we had advancements in cures, prevention treatments, and the ability to predict possible outcomes of spreading diseases. This is just one of the huge technology advancements that made it possible for researchers to even find more improvements to making things simpler. This is where the problem starts. 1. Behavioral Problems Technologies were successful at simplifying people's lives, which is one of its main purpose, but it did way much worse than just simplifying daily activities of people. It sure did cost money but this is not an issue for me. They simplified many things too far to the point that it lessens people's dexterity. The only reason why people are able to improve many things is because there are very many people who actually "thinks" and makes everything better. Simplifying things too far for people is totally harmful in the sense that it lessens the number of "people who truly think" and would eventually make civilization go backwards. This is where people's behaviors, both mental and physical, become an issue. It lessens effective and efficient personal communications, which then results to children having less time to think about personal relations and solving problems in a human way. 2. Health Problems The only thing that I have to agree on accelerating advancements in technologies is on the field of medicine. It is truly exemplary to have medicines and related technologies evolve in such a short period of time, especially when diseases are also evolving with time - which makes the best reason why our medical personnel should cope with the problem as well. However, putting people's lives in grave danger is another subject. Technological advancements, especially in electronics, are clearly making people less healthy. They are adapting behaviors that are not considered "healthy way of living" and make everyone prone to sickness and common illnesses, or even worse terminal illnesses. 3. Productivity Problems This is probably the most common and destructive effect of them all. With technologies rapidly advancing, more and more jobs are being operated "automatically" by these technologies. This means that employees in companies, industries, or any other workplace will be deprived of job opportunities in the near future. With this in thought, all these advancements will even prove the idea that "technology is only for the elite people" and even more discrimination will take place knowing that much less people will have the privilege to choose good gadgets for personal or other use. Let us even put ourselves in place of many generations to come, too many technologies and less people using their minds for problem solving (not dependent on technologies present) meaning we have undermined the true purpose of advancements that it should focus more on improvements on humans, which makes civilization important in the first place. Not only is this present in the workplace but also in schools, where learning is the purpose and focus is needed, and these advancements are just making students and learners difficult for them due to the harmful effects that technologies bring. 4. Environmental Issues There is nothing too difficult to understand in this issue but the only fact that advancements contribute to unmanageable scraps in the world. The scraps that these advancements make are produced even faster than they are recycled, reused, or even properly disposed of. Space debris have not seen to the public as a real threat YET (which is not a big issue to this debate) but taking into account the materials used for these advancements are disregarding Reusable and Recycling factors making the scraps way much more difficult to handle and solve. I concede to the fact that big issues like cyberbullying, online discrimination, etc. that makes use of technologies is really a problem of technological advancement that is really hard to solve, so I will not put that as an issue in this debate. Nevertheless, with the aforementioned problems, I propose the following: All these will be made possible by a certain international organization and will be implemented to all countries. 1. Create A Time Span For Developments Each country should create a time limit to which main developments should take place. This could be from 1 month to 8 months every year, and the "little to no development" time should be observed so that only what is needed to be improved is being improved. This would limit accelerating advancements to a sustainable way that would: create an assurance that technologies will not overpower the human intellect, not lessen humans' dexterity, increase productivity since development will be slowed down, and solution to environmental issues will be able to cope with the problem. 2. All Scientists, Engineers, or Any Other Personnel Involved In Development Should Have A Record This is to maintain and ensure consistency to developments throughout the world. Controlling their research, their developments, and their creations would effectively lessen the harmful effects that technology advancements can bring to the people and the environment. 3. Implementation of Punishments The subjects for these regulations are all citizens in the countries. Even though there are no records of non-personnel, anyone responsible for major development is subject to abide to these regulations. All violators will be punished through, but not limited to, imprisonment, social isolation, and death, depending on the weight of the effects that their own development has brought to their place. Mitigation may not be a perfect solution but it is the only reliable solution as of the present that can be done to prevent more harm in the future. This is mainly to control all developments in each country and even to the world, although wars and other conflicts may occure but this is not something mitigation can do. With those, the proposition is clear and good enough for all people to consider that mitigation is necessary and should be done as soon as possible. References: [1] http://www.digitalresponsibility.org... [2] http://www.huffingtonpost.ca... [3] http://www.smh.com.au... [4] https://www.theguardian.com... [5] https://aeon.co... [6] http://smallbusiness.chron.com... [7] http://smallbusiness.chron.com... [8] http://www.economist.com... [9] https://thebusinessofmining.com...