The advancement of Technology is Good

I'll cover all of the standing arguments in this speech; in order. 1. Terrorism - You recognize yourself that there is an increase in terrorism which can be directly correlated with technological development. The problem with this is that we can't come to an agreement with other countries, above all else, it's empirically proven that technology separates us from other parts of the world. Countries that view things differently from one another (i.e. The United States and the majority of corrupt Middle Eastern countries) won't have any reason to make agreements with us. It's a bit outrageous to think we can actually make some countries come to full agreements with us (as much as you and I both would like to see). The biggest point here is simply... with the increase of technology we see ourselves getting further away from other countries, it's a sad reality. -You're absolutely correct, technology does come with a cost. We both agree with this statement. Unfortunately, the cost is too much to handle, as I'm stressing in all of my arguments in this debate. 2. Social Media -I think that the fact they use it in school was more of an example and you shouldn't disregard the other points I brought up. I don't care to argue whether or not they would read a book if they didn't have a phone (which I think would still be better..) The argument I have here.. the one I want to stress is that it consumes our lives everywhere. Not just in school. Just for further clarification, people will stop communicating at a dinner table. I come from a family where we can't have our phones out at dinner time, I talk about my day and I find interest in mundane things about my family members' days. I go to a good friend's house and they all (parents included) text on their phones. They don't bother to ask about their day. This might be pure speculation, but it's odd that I have people skills and can show emotions better than my friend. I think there's a strong line of correlation that displays people who use technology less are more personable. There will be exceptions of course, I'm sure. I mean, even our writing/spelling/grammar skills are hurt. Shorthand on the things you write and the proper spelling of things. It hurts me to see people in my high school class not know how to spell things I vividly remember learning in... 2nd grade. 3. Social Media/Bullying I actually planned on kicking this argument after my initial post, but your response has actually made me want to continue it. You're absolutely right on everything you say, but there are so many cases (recent) where it doesn't matter. This is just one example, take into consideration there are a lot of other similar stories, but I can recall a few years back I heard about a college student who was *doing his man stuff*, and a group of students must have recorded him somehow, they posted that video of him on multiple sites and he went on to kill himself. No "Terms of Service" and deactivation of an account can automatically stop you from becoming a meme and living a life of embarrassment. I don't think that this argument is NEARLY as important as my others, but it is a good example of showing how Internet can have negative impacts. 4. Human Extinction I agree that we are doing our best to make sure our carrying capacity is increased. But even if that's true, we're only increasing our maximum capacity at a slow rate, in the mean time we continue to do things like pollute the air and destroy the ozone (with technology, mind you). And I don't mean to be disrespectful to scientists, but come on.. we haven't made any progress in the last 30 years as far as space exploration with man made missions. When it's too late, it will be too late. Where are we honestly going to go? Sure we've talked about the Moon and Mars, but there isn't any underlying evidence that shows we'll be able to support colonies of people on other celestial bodies. 5. Animal Extinction -This has got to irritate me the most, that you really think it's okay for us to put so many groups of animals in endangerment and push it further to extinction. When you say that "if it wasn't worth it to people, it wouldn't be happening" you sound so ignorant. Aside from being able to witness the beauty of animals in their natural habitat and the beauty of nature, that isn't going to my focus as I near the end of my argument. -The animals and plants we lose, are the important ones.. I'm going to take this from a study from Drew Harvell a professor at Cornell University that basically says, 'the ones that help us fight disease are the ones that are being killed by human carelessness, and the species that do survive are the ones that pass on things like lyme disease and west nile.' -For example, when forests are fragmented, opossum numbers decline and white-footed mice thrive. Opossums serve as buffers for Lyme disease because they absorb and kill some of the ticks that carry the disease; at the same time, mice amplify both the numbers of ticks and the Lyme disease pathogen. Scientists do not know why the most resilient species, such as mice, are the ones that also amplify pathogens. 6. I don't mean to throw a new argument your way at this point, but I do want to point out that climate change can be linked to my 4th and 5th arguments. Climate Change is a real issue that we're not compensating for with our so to speak "green policies" where we try and help the environment. The fact is, we deteriorate the ozone layer more than we compensate for it with what we try and do. You're right; that probably is very true explanation and definition of what technology is, we create it so it makes life easier, and to help with our desires. That doesn't mean our desires are good, man is selfish and we are willing to do things like kill animals, and destroy the environment, and be completely reckless with it. A lot of your arguments are kind of around this principle of "technology isn't bad, people are the ones doing the bad things" but I just want to highlight that your topic of discussion here is technological advancements are good and they can't be good when we see all 6 of the things I've pointed out. Technology obviously can't be bad, since it's an inanimate object... but it's creation is what separates man on many levels.