The Benefits Of Science And Technology

1. Introduction
2. Scientific impact & fear of unthinkable
3. Science a friend of humanity
4. Science leads to awareness & preventive awareness
5. Medicine great virtue harvested from science
6. Technology & the concept of death
7. One should criticize scientific use & the science itself
8. Where science & technology might lead us next?
9. Genetic engineering & science
10. Communication-another progressive area of science
11. Computer – the greatest boon offered by science
12. Internet – the criticism associated with it
13. Science provides partial protection from natural and man-made disaster
14. Conclusion

Man powered by his imagination and inquisitive character has wondered he mechanisms of nature since time infinite. The quest for the truth he ways in which his surrounding works, has led to many a scientific discoveries and innovations.

Since the art of making fire and creating handcrafted tools, our civilization has come a long way. Science and technology are making advances at an amazing rate. From telephone to the Internet calculators to computer, care to rockets and satellites, we are submerged in a sea of discoveries and inventions made possible by science. Fields like Medicine and communications have made inroads into our cultures and thus our lifestyles.

So vast s the impact of Science in our lives, that people fear the unthinkable. It leads them to accusations such as Science tries to play God. However, according to Hume, God is part of the order that exists in the universe. If so, then Science is just helping us discover the Almighty, which most people perceive as the Ultimate Truth. To quote Charles Pierce, “There is one thing even more vital to science than intelligent methods; and that is, the sincere desire to find out the truth, whatever I may be.”

Repeatedly, it also heard that we are so dependent on Science and Technology that we who create it are nothing but mere puppets. How can we be slaves of this great resource? In fact, it would not be wrong to term Science as a friend of Humanity. This faithful friend has come through many as times. We have reaped innumerable benefits out of this friendship. In return, the sacrifices we had to make constituted just a small token of appreciation for our friend, Science.

Medicine for instance is one of the thousands and thousands of fruits that we have harvested from his friendship. It has helped humankind in innumerable ways. People have started taking charge of their own health and life. Therefore, the life expectancy of a person living in the nineties is about twenty years more on an average form that which people enjoyed at the start of the last century. By the virtue of medicine, not only does a person live longer but also lives his life to the fullest in the best of health.

Deadly diseases such as small box, plague and polio have caused a large epidemics resulting in major loss of life. The plague Epidemic of London in the 1600’s had wipe out nearly fifth of its population. Researchers and scientific effort led many scientists to find cures or preventive vaccinations for these life- threatening diseases. Today these diseases have been eradicated from the face of the earth. Thanks of our Science, millions of lives have been saved from the clutches of these evils. The benefits of discovery of these vaccines needed to be passed on to the public. To cater to the huge human population, Technology in this field evolved side by side the scientific progress. Better techniques resulted in faster and more efficient developments of these scientific discoveries.

The field of medicine today is well required to cope with the health problems faced by man. Science behind Medicine has led to awareness and preventive education among the public. Certain procedures propagated through these awareness programs such as regular exercising and taking regular of insulin for diabetes patients help maintain the health of today’s patients. Insulin can now be synthetically prepared in our laboratories using bacteria cultures. Antibiotics and other medicine sometimes help us fight life-threatening conditions. In short, the patients are often handed a second chance to live. We are no longer at the complete mercy of nature. The right to choose and to take control of one’s life has been passed down to the individual.

As pointed out by Willard Gaylin in his essay, harvesting the Dead, the technology we have developed has essentially change the definition of death. Now although a person could be declared dead, he could have willed his usefulness beyond mortality.

With Internet people have access to wealth information. It not only serves the business’s community but also acts as a lifeline for many scientific researchers and educational inquiries. Practically most of the important journal articles by the well-known scientists and authors are published on the Web. Information about the rarest of the items and happening around the world can be obtained right form the comfort of our computers. Not only that the benefits of the Internet are not restricted to a selected few but also are widely dispersed. Now, even globally people enjoy things like Online Banking, media reports and even entertainment. Many of our needed amenities are readily available off the web. Web can make use of them with comparative ease and even save a considerable amount of time. By doing thus, Internet is helping us achieve maximum efficiently and results out of our scarce and limited resources.

afraid that hackers can sometimes find data such as our bank account numbers and fraud us even without our knowledge. Further critics also argue that people rely too much on Internet and believe all that comes up on their screens. We need to be careful in our ways and act with caution while on the net. Several awareness programs initiated to counter such effect posed by the With its uses, Internet is also perceived as a potential threat to our privacy. People are Internet.

Most of the developed nations have made ample use of the Internet and its wonders. However, agriculture forms the base of most of the economies of Asia and Africa. Technology has had some influence on these nations as well. Their produce on an average is up by at least a factor of two or maybe even three in periods as short as a decade.

Irrigation techniques have helped farmers grow crops in the barren and scorching deserts. Water is conserved by constructing dams and reservoirs. Pesticides help protect the output from crop-destructors such as insects and another pests. Industries based on Agriculture have incorporated this new technology in form of new and more efficient machines. The total output of such countries has increased tremendously.

Science and Technology also helps a nation protect its citizens from any natural or man-made disaster such as earthquake, tomatoes or even war. In such events the people are warned in advance and timely action is taken to guarantee the lives of millions of people every year. A critic reminds us how technology has improved such that we humans can predict the weather of the next fifteen days. Weapons built by the nations for protecting and serving their integrity help bring about peace amongst rival countries as no one in such a case is ready to face the destruction caused by them and thus shrink of a thought of war on an enemy.

In my opinion, Technology and Science like most things have both the good and the bad side to it. There are definitely certain ethical and legal issues associated with it. However, looking more closely at our world, we find ethics in most of the disciplines including Religion. People can take advantage of any field if they wish to, but our social and political ties prevent most of us from acting in manners considered as taboos. Some people who yet work in ways to disrupt the social structure are often times rejected. Further there are laws in place to guarantee that no one’s right to freedom of choice is infringed upon.

If we take a balance and weigh the benefits and costs of Science and Technology, we would find that the case is not even close. The benefits far outweigh any costs connected with Technology and Science. In fact, it seems almost impossible now to imagine a world living without its Science and Technology.

Technology has helped increased the speed of communication whereas at the same time the costs for such a proposition have greatly reduced. People who are separated from their friends and relative by distance of thousands of miles can now get their message around the globe in a matter of seconds using technological instruments such as the phone and emails. Computers have often been cited as the greatest boon offered by Technology to humanity. Its entry revolutionized the whole world. Great pieces of data could be stored with comparative ease. Problems, which would have taken years to solve manually, took a couple of days for the computer to work out. This led to an amazing rate of progress achieved in a considerably short period. For instance without the computer models, it would have never been possible to stimulate extremely slow chemical reactions and predict their outcomes as if they were actually performed. The discovery of the structure of protein has been another major accomplishment in the field of Biochemistry with the aide of Computers. However, with this systems, there was one major drawback. The computers were local and could not share data and results with people around the world.