How does technology help people? Can technology help you make more money?
Many technologies are designed to make human life easier. As technology improves, humans can reap the benefits of innovations, such as completing tasks easier and receiving an online education.
Here are ways that technology helps people through even the most mundane tasks.
Technology Upgrades Human Life
Peter H. Diamandis and Steven Kotler explain that an accelerant of change comes from the broad upgrades to human life made possible through technological progress. As technologies advance, we get more of the abstract ingredients for progress: time, money, and opportunities.
1. Time: Technology helps people by allowing them to carry out their day-to-day activities faster and easier, reducing the amount of manual effort they have to put into tasks. Technology also allows us to put more time into improving our lives. For instance, instead of wandering through a grocery store and browsing for products, we can order groceries online. Further, thanks to continuous improvements in health care, humans have longer lifespans. We can devote all of this additional time to innovating new and better technologies.
(Shortform note: The authors argue that technology saves us time, but why is it that many of us feel busier than ever? In The Bullet Journal Method, Ryder Carroll explains that by giving us unlimited access to information and various tools to simplify our lives, technology has paradoxically made us less productive. This is because technology overloads us with information, resources, and connections that are all constantly vying for our attention. We have so many options for how to spend our time that we can end up wasting it on things that don’t matter to us. Therefore, while technology may grant us more time, it can also make it harder for us to spend it productively.)
2. Money. Advances in technology lead to increased wealth that can be invested back into the creation of new technologies. Diamandis and Kotler explain that, as technology improves, we learn new ways to use resources effectively and to improve the productivity of systems—which saves money. Also, advances in technology allow us to create more affordable products, so that more people have access to sophisticated tools of progress and innovation.
3. Opportunities: Technological progress also shatters traditional constraints that hold people back from making contributions to society, such as geographical and socioeconomic limitations. This allows more people to, in turn, contribute to technological progress. For example, the internet provides resources like online learning platforms and allows people from across the globe to connect and share ideas.
| Reaping the Benefits of Technology: Inequality and the Digital Divide Technology may create a wealth of opportunities for those who can connect to it and harness its benefits, but for people without access, this digital disparity can lead to them falling behind their connected counterparts—an issue known as “the digital divide.” According to the United Nations, over 2.9 billion people remain unconnected to the internet, 96% of whom live in developing countries. Experts argue that digital network availability isn’t the issue—nearly the entire global population could theoretically access a mobile broadband network. Instead, the real obstacles are that devices remain unaffordable to many, people aren’t aware of the benefits of online connectivity, there’s a lack of content in local languages, and people lack the literacy and skills to use the digital interfaces. So, even though the authors claim that advances make technology cheaper, many people still can’t afford or access these products. |
Excellent article and analysis.