Quality of Life

Up till now I have focused on how technology affects our lives and society with regards to rights, privacy, etc... However to today I will focus on how technology affects society in a different way. Specifically how technology improves quality of life of individuals.

As a first example I'll use that of prosthetics. For decades people have had purely mechanical prosthetics (while this is a type of tech it is not what I will focus on). However now there is a new way technology could help improve the quality of life of amputees. (Please see the first link below) There is now a technology that could potentially interface a mechanical prosthesis with a nervous system. This would be a huge leap forward in science. Amputees could not only have better control of artificial limbs but potentially also feel with them. This at one point in our history was more or less considered purely impossible science fiction but now seems to be growing closer to reality. There are tons of examples of how advances using computers and technology as a whole affect people who have been harmed. As another example please see the second link below. It describes how technology can be used to give site to the blind.

This first example is truly sensational and realistic. My second example however is much more broad. Before the internet was created there were many different ways for individuals to get daily information. By daily information here I mean traffic, weather, sports scores, etc... Individuals could listen to the radio, read the paper or retrieve the information by other means. Nowadays however almost everyone uses some form of internet related application to get this daily info. Most people don't realize just how much this technology has improved and simplified our quality of life. We no longer need to wait for traffic reports. We have up to date weather. We have up to date news. We have live scores. And of course the list goes on. In the third link below dependence on internet technology is explored. It is shocking to see just how much it affects us. I personally would not want to go back to a world without this ease.

To conclude, technology greatly affects our quality of life. Some ways are more important than others. Technology can restore use to once lost part of our selves. It also helps simplify our lives and thereby gives us time for other things. Technology improves our lives in too many ways to count.

http://www.gizmag.com/nerve-prostheses-interface-scaffolds/21646/

http://www.theithacajournal.com/article/20120302/NEWS01/203020344/Alternative-Tompkins-Cornell-grad-helps-deliver-patterns-light-blind-people?odyssey=tab%7Ctopnews%7Ctext%7CFRONTPAGE

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