What is technology in our day and age? Some would say it’s iPhones, touchscreen tablets, laptops, having a phone on your watch, or cars that parallel park themselves.
A lot of people call these things high-tech or next generation technology, but they fail to realize that they are more than technology; they are more on the realm of commodities, wants not needs. The fear here is that these commodity items may be used for alternate uses some being not so beneficial.
Such items make our life easier but they don’t change a country for the better, they change it for the comfort of a human being.
Changing a person’s comfort level is not making the world a safer place to live in or ending world hunger.
What I consider to be real, world-changing technology is what allows us to venture into the stars, or enables us to purify polluted water in a third world country.
Making renewable sources of energy available to all and protecting our environment, this is what I consider technology that changes the world for the better.
But there is also technology, which sole purpose is destruction and its focus is on the submission of the weak for the benefit of the powerful.
A drone may be entertaining to fly and show off with a group of friends to have a good time, but its purpose that serves for amusement can also be switched, and the same drone can be used to drop a bomb on a neighboring country.
Or, by taking advantage of its lightweight size, might be used to spy on anyone and avoid detection by almost any type of radar technology, proof of this is the recent bypass of security by a drone in the White House.
A toy to some may be a very resourceful weapon to those with ill intentions towards our country and citizens.
Certain government agencies also develop pieces of technology with a military purpose, one being a self-operating humanoid robot eerily nicknamed “Pet Man.”
This robot has about the same mobility of a human being and is able to lift three to four times its body weight.
The current description of this certain robot’s tasks and responsibilities is to aid military personnel by lifting heavy ammunition crates or any type of heavy labor.
But what is to stop any programmer from erasing these tasks from the robot’s operating system and replacing them with picking up a machine gun and shoot?
I don’t see it very far off that these so-called “Pet Men” may replace all of our military, call me paranoid but the evidence doesn’t lie.
At the pace technology advances, having the latest phone or trendy piece of technology may not be our biggest concern in the near future.