Overreliance on Technology (Essay Sample)

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Overreliance on Technology; a Rebuttal
Technology inundates every part of our lives. It is evident in the windows phones we carry, the televisions we watch, the trains we board and the traffic lights we obey. Technology has important effects in our lives; for example, the Internet is revolutionizing economy and society. (Adler, Pg 5) Some people argue that we are getting to be over reliant on technology: I beg to defer. Overreliance is the excessive dependence on or trust in something. (Oxford Dictionary) People may depend on technology but so long as they have not automated everything, we are in the clear.
Technology is a necessity, we can do without it but it is convenient to have it. Much Technological advancement has been made in both the health and warfare department, but human intelligence remains the ultimate tiebreaker. The many times that nurses physically check a patient’s vitals, record on the charts and use their discretion to determine what course of action to take proves that technology has not super-ceded human thinking.
With cloud computing, data storage and access has become easier. Job hunting, background checks and even job interviews are nowadays conducted online. Conference calls, information updates and important meetings among business executives in different continents occur online. The Internet has also employed millions; families depend on it as their source of income. Can there be an overreliance on oxygen or water? Not likely. In the same way, there cannot be an overreliance on technology as it is here to stay; it is irreversible. There is no going back to the dark ages.
Cynics argue that with the advent of technology, chaos is bound to follow. People have become overly dependent on technology such that power outages and software crashes can plunge countless businesses and millions of people into chaos and panic. (UNCTAD, Pg.35) This, however, is true only to an extent. There are plenty of safeguards you can put in place such that if the software or even the hardware on your device crashes, you can still access your data. It is important to have backups of backups. It is important to note that digital information can never be lost and it is probably the safest place you can keep your data and information. This technology is there for convenience, it is preposterous to suggest that there is an overdependence on technology if you are using the technology only up to a point and the human touch or intervention is still needed.
Everything from data collection, storage, analysis and data manipulation is digitized. (UNCTAD, Pg.54). Ledgers are no longer used; data is instead directly fed into the computers. Small scale businesses as well as world superpowers all rely on technology. With the advent of nuclear weaponry, technology needs monitoring now more than ever. (Bryant, Pg.42) The fact that missile technology and other weaponry need constant checks and they cannot act independently without human guidance and intervention validates my stand. In Military training, Computer Based Training is not done alone; other field sessions are incorporat...