Academia de Studii Economice Facultatea de Cibernetica, Statistica si Informatica Economica

The dangers of information technology

Student: Melinescu Alexandru Anul I, Sem. II, Grupa 1093

Bucuresti, 2011

The dangers of information technology

Computers and technology are not dangerous. Neither a chainsaw neither a machine gun is dangerous. I have no desire to go back to the "good old days" before computers, and welcome new technology. In the field of medicine alone computers and technology have made enormous progress in our knowledge of diseases and effective treatment. I doubt also if any of us would truthfully want to drive a car designed in the 1920's on today's highways. The advent of computers and technology has allowed the design of cars with features undreamed of back then. No one can dispute that you have a greater chance of surviving a car accident in a modern car than one even just built twenty years ago. Just as the motor car made redundant the saddler, the blacksmith, the livery stable and a host of other jobs associated with the horse, the use of computers has made many jobs redundant. I cannot deny that fact. Computers and technology move so fast that many of us have to struggle to keep pace. Equally however just as the motor car created new jobs, the use of computers and technology has created new jobs and opportunities. In a lot of cases these new jobs have done away with tedium of mind destroying repetitious forms of work and that can't be bad or reason for fear. Lets not adopt the attitude of the workers of long ago in England who smashed and destroyed weaving machines because of fear of technology at that time BC (before computers) . We must embrace computers and technology, not destroy them. Computers and technology are only tools like the chain saw and machine gun. Just as a chainsaw can wreak havoc in the hands of a maniac and the machine gun in the wrong hands can destroy hundreds of us at a time, so it is with the computer and technology only with the aid of computers and technology destruction can be done on a massive scale. Computers and technology are undoubtedly the most powerful tools that man has invented. Abuse them and lose control and we may well lose ourselves. That, my friends, is the real danger.( the following is an essay I wrote for my 11th grade English class, I thought that it was one of the better things that I wrote when I first started out, and would like to know the opinions of other writers. the assignment was to think of something that would cause hysteria in our society. The definition of hysteria: exhibiting overwhelming or unmanageable fear or emotional excess. Apply this element to a society and you would get something like what I call chaos. In our modern day and age, throughout our day to day lives, we depend upon many things to get by comfortably, or even at all, most of which are electronic/machines. Now if how all these things were to be taken away from the human society worldwide I believe there would be nothing in comparison to the severe state of hysteria we would thereupon enter.

The first thing that comes to mind as a result to the loss of electricity would be the loss of modern communications. Not only would all land line phones lose purpose but buildings that control and coordinate satellites for cellular telephonic communications would as well be at a loss. Even the internet would be unusable because all the computers would be shut off. This would put the world in a very dangerous situation, medical catastrophes would go unattended to, shipping industries would lose their coordination, the country could become a sitting duck due to lack of military communications. All our means of transportation would also be at loss. The lack of traffic reports would leave us unable to predict traffic. Ships would be unable to coordinate where other ships in the ocean were. Airplanes would be unable to coordinate where other ships in the ocean were. Airplanes would be unable to coordinate where other are, which would be particularly dangerous for this vehicle considering the speed that it floes at would not give it enough time if the pilot was to see another airplane flying in its direction. If we valued our safety we would be mostly reduced to cars and inefficiently at that Thirdly and probably most catastrophic of all, would be the effect on the economy. We would enter a state of total chaos, companies' investors would be left in the dark, credit card companies would lose track of who owes how much. Stores would be robbed due to lack of security, industries Could no longer produce the things that they once could due to the lack of mechanical cooperation. Money itself might even fall so much behind in its records that it could become obsolete, and people would have to go back to trading as a form of currency. The world as we know it would literally fall into what it was several centuries ago. It is amazing how much we as a society depend upon machines/electricity. For the most part all our technological advances now rely upon electricity and machinery, and our technology seems to be advancing at an ever increasing rate, but this in my opinion can't last forever in perfect peace and harmony. In reaction to this thought I think of the movie Terminator, featuring our lovely governor I might add. In the film we continue upon this path of technological advancement until it comes to a point where we are fully dependent upon machines for just about everything including the way we go to war, and the way we defend against it, and in the movie the machines are built to be so independent that they are capable of secretly plotting a rebellion in which they do. Now whether or not something of this degree would occur is beyond my reckoning, however the overall theme of the movie, if looked at from a certain perspective, is actually quite logical. The theme is that we will one day build machines so advanced that they will one day control and dominate us If you think of this not in a literal sense but by our severe dependency for them growing ever worse, they may one day have more power over us than we have over them, putting us in a very fragile position. I think that if a catastrophe occurred in which electricity and

machines could not be used now or deep into the future it might not only cause utter hysteria, but could even create such chaos that the world as we know it would self destruct, and create for was what the ice age did for the dinosaurs.