1. As people rely more and more on technology to solve problems, the ability of humans to think for themselves will surely deteriorate.
The statement linking technology negatively with human thinking has been playing on recent human experience during the past centuries. The pace of technology development has been rocketing and there has been no time in the history that technology is playing such a vital role in our everyday experiences. Although people nowadays have high reliance on technology, technology only serves as an instrument that enables people to think further and more creatively.
Admittedly, the abuse of technology sometimes does deteriorate people’s ability to think independently. The convenience of technology provides a shortcut for every-day problem-solving that saves time and efforts for people, so technology tend to be the prioritized solution for most people instead of thinking independently. There are people who have absolutely no sense of direction and purely reply on GPS for daily orientation. An extreme example is that a group of tourists in Japan drove their car in to the sea following the GPS instruction. It is also usual to use mobile calculator to work out the appropriate amount of tip after a meal revealing that many modern people are inept of basic calculation. These facts raise concerns of inability of thinking over the modern people and the future generations.
Although technology may contributes to the retrogression of thinking ability to some extent, the deterioration is mainly restricted in accuracy and precision which requires repetitive work that takes massive time and efforts. The technology frees people from this kind of work and so that people can have more time to focus on creative thinking. The existence of technology makes human thinking more productive, improves the effectiveness of our contributions and finally makes the society more efficient. For example, Computers are now widely utilized in almost every field of study as powerful and indispensable instruments facilitating people’s cogitation and problem-solving. But, before the introduction of electronic trading system on computers in the financial market, traders have to make enormous calls to other banks and clients to make offer and confirm the details of the deal which is a very time-consuming and fallible process. With the advanced trading system, deals are operated online with updated and accurate information which provides traders with a much more efficient platform and allow them more time for intellectual thinking to make the best trading decision.
Contrary to the statement, technology provides the foundation for wilder imagination and further creative attempts which eventually enhances our thinking ability. In the horse-and-buggy era, people’s thinking is very limited. How to deliver a letter; transport the goods to another city or how to irrigate the plants are already big enough problems for them. However, in the contemporary society, diversified means of transportation including high-speed rail, auto-mobile, long-haul flights, quick and convenient communications throughout the world using internet, advanced agriculture techniques makes these things no longer problems, while the main issues nowadays become how to tackle terrorism, how to deal with global warming, how to prevent global economic crisis and so on. We can imagine that along with the development of technology, one day these problems will all be history and new problems arise that require continuous human intelligence and perception. The advancement of technology marks the development of human society in different periods and the cogitation of human-being advances along with technology.
As technology brings convenience and advancement to our life, the reliance on technology seems to escalate in many aspects of life. However, it does not necessarily means that the ability of humans to think for themselves has deteriorated but it introduces new methods of problem-solving and new ways of thinking as well as it provides the foundation for humans to think further and more efficiently.