How technologically obsessed are you? Do you spend your entire day on your computer or on your phone? Conversely, can you confidently state that technology does not play a significant role in your life? Those of you who said the latter are mistaken. If you’re reading this lesson on a computer, it’s safe to say you live in the contemporary era. Yet, even if you don’t know it, any modern existence is fully dependant on technology.
The definition of the word technology provides the first hint. Simply said, technology is any practical application of scientific knowledge. Therefore technology does not have to be electrical or cutting-edge. You are employing technology whether your house was built with nails, painted any colour, has running water, is heated or air-conditioned, or even if you cultivate vegetables. In reality, even if you live in a remote indigenous tribe, your tribe is likely to employ rudimentary technology. Tools such as hammers and spears were among the early forms of technology, as were simple shelters. This is all technology.
Limits on Technology
One look around a modern home reveals how utterly dependant we are on technology. Almost everything you see around you right now is most likely technology. When we spend our lives immersed in technology, it’s tempting to believe it can accomplish anything. Yet, technology has its limitations. In this lesson, we’ll go over some of those restrictions.
Natural constraints, economic restrictions, and ethical limits are the three primary categories. A limit might be either rigid or soft. It is possible that a limit describes something that is impossible to breach (a hard limit), but limits can also be soft limits—limits depending on how human society operates and thinks, and they may not be limitations in other circumstances.
Natural Limits
Natural constraints are hard boundaries—things that technology cannot physically perform. Even Nevertheless, no limit is definitively a hard limit because our understanding of the cosmos is always evolving. It’s conceivable that what we believe is impossible now is actually doable. But, whatever the reality is, there will always be inherent boundaries to what is conceivable in the cosmos.
For example, physics laws state that we cannot move faster than the speed of light. Consequently, no matter what technology we develop, we feel that no spaceship will ever be able to break beyond that barrier. A logical limit is another type of natural limit: something cannot be both true and false at the same time. For example, technology cannot allow us to utilise every inch of land on Earth while still protecting every natural habitat. Technology can help us safeguard the environment by allowing us to accomplish the same thing with less resources, but it can only do so much.
Economic Limits
Then there are financial constraints. Several things may be technologically feasible but so costly that they are absolutely impracticable. Many of today’s most advanced medications, from gene therapies to stem cell treatments to complicated pharmaceuticals, are too expensive to develop and produce. As a result, it’s likely that there are other medications that might work but aren’t commercially practical.
Of fact, economic constraints are not always permanent—just because something is inexpensive now does not imply it will be in the future. Yet there are some proposals for mitigating the effects of climate change, such as extracting carbon dioxide straight from the atmosphere or erecting a large enough barrier between us and the sun to minimise the energy we receive from it. They, however, are far too pricey to be worthwhile. For example, if living space on Earth is an issue, we may terraform Mars over a few decades to create an earth-like environment. But, the expense would be utterly prohibitive right now.
Ethical Limits
Finally, there are ethical boundaries to technology, or restrictions imposed by preconceived beliefs about what is acceptable and wrong in a given culture. Humans have achieved significant progress in areas such as genetic engineering (including gene therapy), cloning, artificial intelligence, surveillance, cybernetics, and biological warfare. People are concerned about the ethics of these technologies for a variety of reasons. Gene therapy and cybernetics have both promised to boost human capacities, but what about people who cannot afford the technologies? And are we attempting to play God? We are approaching the point when human privacy can be fully removed. Yet, do we go too far in infringing on people’s rights? Concerns regarding the use of technology in combat are understandable. All of these issues will have to be dealt with over the coming centuries, whether through laws, public outcry, or self-regulation.
Summary
Let’s take a moment to go over everything we’ve learnt. As we learnt, technology is simply any practical application of scientific knowledge. Technology has been a component of human culture since the first tool was created, and we are now surrounded by it. Technology may be quite basic or extremely electrical and complicated. Yet, technology has its limitations.
Natural, economic, and ethical restrictions to technology are the three basic categories. Natural limitations, as we taught, are those where the rules of the universe physically forbid us from doing anything. There is a hard limit that we cannot overcome until our knowledge of the cosmos changes. One example is that the rules of physics state that we cannot achieve the speed of light. Moreover, economic constraints refer to things that are conceivable but so expensive that they are just not viable. Terraforming Mars or erecting massive barriers between us and the sun to cool the Earth are examples of this.
Finally, ethical constraints are situations in which we can do something but do not feel it is ethically correct. Genetic engineering, cloning, artificial intelligence, surveillance, cybernetics, and biological warfare all raise ethical considerations. Many wonder whether it is ethical to alter people’s genetics, play God, destroy privacy, and advance combat technology. All of these topics must be studied and explored in the next years.
