Problems of Modern Technology

Despite the benefits of technology, there are substantial concerns. Sedentary lifestyles, pollution and nuclear proliferation pose health and safety risks. Even professionals have come to believe that gadgetry solves everything. On the organic front, biotechnology poses questions about “what it means to be human” in a context of possibilities pre-modern cultures did not experience.

Health problems such as diabetes stemming from low amounts of physical movement are increasing. Even rural India is experiencing new health problems long linked to “modernity."

Pollution-induced ozone depletion and the possibility of man-made climate change are two of many instances in which technology’s impact on nature is unforeseen to humanity’s overall detriment.

Technological proliferation means that increasingly potent warfare equipment has become available to the poor. Cash-strapped nations such as Iran can afford to eventually develop or buy devastating nuclear or biological weapons.

Over-reliance on technology encompasses many aspects of life. Concluding that better classroom gadgetry automatically translates into better education is a frequent, and questionable, assumption.

Cloning raises us to a plane once reserved for the divine. At the same time, “test tube babies” can serve to make people commodities. There is no guidance from history because the reality of such possibilities was only fantasy for previous generations.