Issue196,偶的第一篇，诚恳请大家帮助修改

sherrylilyUID: 205163

TOPIC: ISSUE196 - "Technology creates more problems than it solves, and may threaten or damage the quality of life."
WORDS: 788          TIME: 1:19:05          DATE: 2006-03-01

The speaker asserts that technology creates more problems than it solves, and may threaten or damage the quality of life. I agree with the speaker insofar that technology caused many problems inhibiting social progress; nevertheless, technology benefits us more than harms, on the overall basis, and it has improved the quality of life, making humans enjoy more convenience and expediency.

For the supporting evidence of the speaker's claim, maybe it can be comprehended from the following three areas: political, economic, and cultural.  In the political area, technology helps to invent many devastating weapons, resulting in thousands of death, or even more.  Atomic bomb, harriers, aircraft carriers, all serves to be weapons used in the war. In the first world-war, the throw of atomic bombs in two cities of Japan, caused a series of tragic. Men were injured, died, and some fled away from home. It is reported that more than 50 million people died during that time, and the aftereffect of the throw of atomic bombs still continue in those two cities, as a reflection of severe nuclear radiancy. In the economic area, there is a more and more widely use of technology in economic development. People use more high-tech machines to explore this colorful while still resourceful planet, with the hope of finding more useful resources and mines to satisfy the increasing demand of human beings'. These behaviors, accompanied by over-utilize the environment, are increasingly causing more and more problems involving the decreased variety of animal kinds, pollution, worse-than-ever climate, which in turn damages the quality of humans' life. In the cultural area, with the increasing use of technology, especially Internet, ancient cultures, passed from generations to generations, are currently experiencing a dying procedure. Fewer and fewer people, especially the youth, use their own languages, since in the Internet, friends from all of the world use a specific language, mainly in English. It is also true for sagas, legends fate, lesser and lesser are known by their offspring, a result of more diversified and attainable entertainment  are being developed, also a result of the fact that people can travel other places more easily with new transportations like cars, motor ships and airplanes.

However, except the forgoing facts, I fundamentally disagree with the speaker's claim that technology creates more problems than it solves, and may threaten the quality of life.

To get a full appreciation of what this means we must turn first to some recent human inventions. Cars, as mentioned earlier, was invented by Frenchman Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot in 1769 and ultimately become one of the necessities in the 20's century. It is said that Americans traveled about 1200 miles in their lifetime on average, mainly on foot. And one hundred years later, average American travel about 12,000 miles by automobile alone. People now have a possibility to travel more places than before, especially after the born of airplanes by Brother Wrights. It took Columbus, the Italian explorer in the service of Spain who determined that the earth is round, over 3 months to sail from Europe to America; however, we can do it within one day. It is obviously that technology enables us to have the opportunity to know better about the world around us, and have a widen view of surroundings. Although some may claim that the invention of cars and planes caused many environmental problems, they, in fact, benefits us more than those questions, and no reasonable and sober one would ignore this fact.

We continue with our retrospection about human inventions. Air-condition, helps us to live in a more comfortable world where the temperature is always pleasant, and no torrid or chilly days existed there. Computers, enable us to deal with a huge number of data in a few seconds, which will turn out to be a dream in the previous days. Internet, with the more convenient and easily to access, is playing a more important role in daily life than any other inventions in human history. It is easier for people to get to know friends all of the world, and sending a mail to friends in the opposite side of world only takes a few seconds. Health technologies, X-ray, artificial organs, biomaterials, are all playing a vital role in people's health-keeping. Modern people have a comparable long life expectancy than even before, and living a more than 100 age is not a dream. All of which, reveals that people are living a better life, and the life quality has significantly improved, with the help of technology.

To sum up, the speaker is true in some respects since technology do cause some problems, some of which are quite serious. Nevertheless, that would not efface the merits and contributions of technology: they help us to live a easier and more comfortable life, with an improved life quality.