Advantages and Disadvantages in the Progression of Technology

    Dependence on technology is something that I think many of us tend to overlook. This oversight is largely due to the fact that technology comes in many forms other than cell phones and computers. One of the most glaringly obvious technologies we all heavily depend on is agriculture. Without agriculture, it would be far more difficult for us to specialize in different fields and virtually impossible for so many of us to spend time working on things other than food. Hence, most humans get far more choice in how they spend their time than they would get in a world without agriculture. We also are exponentially more resilient to famine and can produce a surplus of food each year without great issues. Another such technology is plumbing. Our cities are far safer–not to mention cleaner–for the simple fact that we are able to dispose of our waste without it readily persisting in our environment. This benefit alone works wonders to prevent disease, both by keeping water supplies clean and decreasing the population of pests. Similarly, water treatment is hugely important for preventing the spread of diseases, along with safe surgeries that humans can reasonably survive. Electricity is also a technology most of us find it hard to live without, simply because of how useful it is in all sorts of different tasks from entertainment to one’s profession.
    However, none of these benefits come without a cost. Every one of the technologies listed prior are ones that humans, at large, have become reliant on. And if any one of these tools were to betray us, our society would undoubtedly be shaken. This downside is most obvious for agriculture because we have been reliant on it for the longest. Most of our modern society is built upon the basis of agriculture (i.e the ability to specialize in a career and not have to think about obtaining means for survival). Hence, if agriculture collapses, so too does everything built on top of it. The largest issue with a dependency such as this one is that we lose the ability to ever go back to a stage before it. If we decide it is advantageous to go back to an earlier stage in the development of any of these technologies, it would be incredibly hard to. It has already been quite difficult to phase out coal powerplants for other forms due to the increasing scarcity of coal. And this difficulty is all but inevitable due to how technologies all build on each other. Water treatment only functions because it has power, which only functions because we can run generators, which only functions because of all the technologies building up to them. Hence, if one block is altered, the whole system fails. Therefore, although these technologies have great undeniable benefits, they also hold the potential to cause great harm if anything should happen to them.