Hello, all! I'm new on this forum and currently studying for the GRE. I would greatly appreciate any comments on the following issue essay. It is an exercise I undertook in the Magoosh practice test.
Here is the passage: "Technology, while apparently aimed to simplify our lives, only makes our lives more complicated."
Here is my response:
I disagree with the present passage because it states a bias and incomplete argument. Technology has offered humanity a set of tools to simplify everyday activities, since computers, microwaves, freezers, laundry machines, etc. Before these technologies, every person had to spend quite an amount of time working in repetitive as well as domestic task. Since the invention of electricity, several innovations came along that made life much easier. Light itself allowed us to overpass day light and be capable of working at any hour we found fit to our routine. In a sense, this advantage gave way to economic growth as it allowed to do activities that were not possible during daylight. Furthermore, as mentioned, electricity lead to electro domestic which facilitated the housing responsibilities, giving more time to leisure and work.
On the other hand, one cannot deny that technology demands more from us as it requires us to learn how to use it. However, this learning cost is overweighted by its benefits. Thus, in the long run, the cost of learning (time and resources spent) will be less than the expected benefits (efficient exploitation of resources). For example, the introduction of typing machines, and then computers, implied learning costs for companies and all kind of organizations, as these enterprises had to invest resources to qualify their employees for getting the skills to manage those technologies. However, the long run costs saved and the increased productivity had a positive impact on margins. As a matter of fact, there were savings on inputs, and in human resources. A repetitive task such as data collection on a big scale could be done by one computer instead of by two or more employees, and furthermore, in a shorter amount of time.
Some have stated that technology, as the example above shows has let people without jobs. Nonetheless, this reading is misleading because what innovation has done is to save human resources from repetitive monotonous task and help to reallocate this resources into more productive and prolific activities. The real issue that has taken jobs from humans is no technology, but lack of qualification and higher education. Therefore, technology, in fact, has done its part in simplifying our lives. However, humans have not done enough to respond to this changes in order to take advantage of human capacity for keeping the phase of innovation and progress.
In conclusion, it is an erroneous statement to deny completely the benefits of technology as the passage does. Though technology has made our life easier, it is true that technology has made manufacturing works and works that require repetitive task less available for human capital. However, technology is not the one to blame for this complication in our life. Instead, humans are responsible for not keeping ahead of technology in order to educate people for developing greater abilities and acquired an acumen of new insights for exploiting their full capacity into more prolific activities.
In advance, thank you for taking the time and for your comments! Hope everyone has a great day and week!
Regards,
Brenda
