Technology - A Boon or Bane ?

“Is Technology a boon or a bane?” not an easy question to answer. It is a topic with lots of complexities, which are beyond the scope of this review. The fact is technology has contributed to significant improvements in areas of medicine, communication, travel, human living, education. It has also contributed to global warming, nuclear stockpiles, mechanization of human life.

So is technology good or evil? Let us take a very simple example of a matchstick. One can use it to light a lamp or light a fire for cooking. It can also be used to light a fire that burns some one’s home down or a newly wide bride who has not bought in enough dowry to satisfy her in law’s endless greed. The matchstick by itself is just a harmless object. In the hands of a mother lighting the lamp or the cooking fire, it becomes beneficial. The same matchstick in the hands of a small careless child, could prove to be fatal. And when it becomes a tool for the person to burn down a home, or a newly wedded bride, it becomes a tool to kill and destroy.

Technology is like that matchstick, a tool, which on it’s own has no use. It’s when some one owns it, that it becomes a boon or a bane. A doctor could use the CT scan to diagnose a person’s illness and take the necessary action. The same doctor could also use the CT scan to determine whether the unborn child is a female, and if yes, get it aborted. In both cases the CT scan does the same function it is expected to. In the first case it assists in saving a patient’s life, in the second case, it assists in terminating an unborn person’s life. The difference is in the usage, here the culprit is not technology, but the person using it. I can use a knife to cut vegetables or cut a rope, I can use the same knife to murder some one. So who is at fault here, the knife or the owner?

Technology is a boon as long as it is our slave. It’s when we let it become a master, that it becomes a bane. Mind you on it’s own, technology can never be your master. We are light years away from robots who can control humans and artificial intelligence, so lets not even go there first. When you say technology is dominating your life, in a sense you are allowing it to do so. As a human being you have a brain, to decide what’s wrong, what’s not, when to stop, and when to get off. If you are unable to use that brain, you don’t have any right to blame others for it. People complain that technology makes one lazy and obese. Sorry, it’s  not technology that’s at fault here, its you. If you have become a couch potato, that is your choice. 

Here are a few pictures related to technology - good or bad ?