In sum, although scientific discoveries and technological advances have produced tremendous improvements in the quality of human life, they have often had negative consequences as well. The risk of cancer caused by the inhalation of asbestos particles, the possibility of large-scale industries accidents, the ethical issues raised by the use of life-prolonging technologies, and the ever-present danger of nuclear holocaust are as much a part of the modern era as space travel, miracle drugs, and computers that can operate whole factories. Although technology is not “out of control,” there is clearly a need for improved procedures for anticipating and preventing the negative consequences of new technologies.
7. High Technology and Employment
The rapid growth of employment in industrial regions like California’s “Silicon Valley,” Route 128 outside Boston, and the “Silicon Prairie” in the Dallas Fort Worth area, as well as in hundred of industrial parks throughout the United States, is viewed as one of the benefits of investment in high-technology industries. The term high technology is associated with computers, advanced electronics, genetic engineering, and other frontiers of technological change, but it is rarely well defined. And without a clear definition of this term it is almost impossible to assess its impact on society.
As the term is used by academics, policymakers, and journalists, high technology refers to at least one of the following features of technology:
An extensive degree of technological sophistication embodied in a product.
A rapid rate of employment growth associated with an innovative product.
A large research and development effort associated with production.
One implication of this definition is that it includes job-creating processes like research and development as well as technologies like computers, which also have created new growth in employment. Yet the employment-producing features of high technology can be problematic. Many high technologies, such as robotics and computer-aided design, are intended to reduce employment by substituting the work of machines guided by computers for human production of all kinds. Early machine technologies tended to replace human labor power, but high technology tends to reduce the need for human brain power. Employment in occupations like drafting and industrial drawing in engineering and architecture, for example, is threatened by the accelerating use of computer design and graphics programs.
8. The Effects of Technology
It should be noted that the effects of new technologies are not always positive. The phrase technological dualism is sometimes used to refer to the fact that technological changes often have both positive and negative effects. The introduction of diesel locomotives, for example, greatly increased the efficiency of railroad operations, but it is also led to the decline and eventual abandonment of railroad towns whose economies were based on the servicing of steam locomotives. Another example is the automation of industrial production. Automation has greatly improved manufacturing process in many industries. It has increased the safety of certain production tasks and led to improved product quality in many cases. But it has also replaced thousands of manual workers with machines, and significant numbers of those workers find themselves unemployed and lacking the skills required by the high-tech occupations of postindustrial society.
Some observers go so far as to say that technology is a danger to the modern world. They feel that it has become an autonomous force that it is out of control. This is a recurrent theme in movies and science fiction-HAL, the computer that takes over the ship in 2001: A Space Odyssey is a good example. But it is also claimed that technology is increasingly independent from human control in the real world. Events like the accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear-power plant in 1979; the toxic gas leak that killed more than 2,000 people in Bhopal, India, in 1984; and the disaster at the Chernobyl nuclear-power plant in the Soviet union in 1986 seem to indicate that human beings cannot control the technologies they have created. 感谢您阅读《ScienceandTechnolo 》一文，出国留学网(liuxue86.com)编辑部希望本文能帮助到您。
