Technology products: do they make life easier or more complicated?

Normal 0 14 false false false IT X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Tabella normale"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} In the last few years technology has invaded our lives, changing our habits, the way we work, study, have fun and communicate. Every day a new technological instrument is launched on the market, be that cameras, new pc or mobile models, more and more sophisticated televisions and so on. And if adults consider all this as something new, the new generations, the ones that were born and have been growing in this technological epoch, consider all these constant evolutions and the launch of new, advanced products as something very natural, and not only interesting.

 

But with all these technological devices a question must be asked: can technology really improve our life? Or was it better in the past, when we did not need to use many different instruments? What is certain is that a unique answer cannot be found, and it is not possible to generalise. On the one hand it is true that the many technological tools that we have at our disposal have deprived us of something (the pleasure of playing in a park instead of in front of a video game console, the happiness when you find a letter written by a faraway friend in the mailbox...) and have made our life a bit more complicated (learning to use many different types of mobiles, computers and so on is not always easy, especially if you are not that young); on the other hand it cannot be denied that new technologies have caused many improvements.

 

The question about the advantages and disadvantages of technological tools on our everyday life has been rekindled by a study that has been recently published on Time and that was carried out by Ad Age, an authoritative source of news about marketing and media. The survey, which has taken only a part of the population into consideration, i.e. the families with an income of about 100,000 dollars a year, does not only provide interesting information about the popularity of technologic tools: it also gathers the opinions of the people that use these instruments, in order to understand whether they are considered in a positive way, as instruments that can improve life, or negatively as objects that can only make it more complicated. And the results of the survey reveals a pretty fair partition: more than a half of the interviewed people has not expressed a positive opinion about the great number of technological tools that we can – and sometimes have to – use every day, claiming that these instruments are very often the cause of complications and stress. The remaining part of the interviewed people, a bit less than a half, has said to be in favour of new technologies in our everyday life, asserting that thanks to these objects life has become easier and amusing.

 

Unfortunately the survey does not give other information about the reasons why people are in favour or against the huge use of technology, but if you think about your own relationship to the many technological instruments that you use you will not find it difficult to understand the reasons of both parts. Having a new generation mobile, which allows us to check emails in each moment, for example, is certainly an advantage, but not all people have an aptitude for following the constant developments of technology and learning to use different types of instruments that can turn out to be complicated if you are not used to that. As usual the truth lies somewhere in between!