Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Forum 4: New technologies, positive or negative?


Once again, Néstor has proposed to us another opportune topic for debate. With his article On a Pessimist view he has already launched a discussion on new technologies and their potential risks. I would like to begin our first forum this year by expanding Néstor’s concerns beyond Facebook. Our leading questions are simple, though answers may not be so:


Are new technologies positive or negative? To what extent? What are we gaining from their use? What are we loosing?


Join the debate.



11 comments:

martin said...

In my opinion new technologies are positive because people may communicate among them in a better and a faster way. Internet, for instance, has changed the communications in the world and you may get the information you want. However, there is some information in the net that is not always truthful so you have to pay attention to it.

Daniela said...

Technologies have their advantages and disadvantages. On one hand, as Martin said, we have internet that help us to do whatever we need or want. We can look for information quicklier than if we have to go to the library, for instance. But, on the other hand, internet is becoming people into no-book users or readers.
A negative side I find to technologies is the implemenattion of new machineries instead of people that could perfectly fit its place. This could create a lot of work for unemployed people, and, as a necesity, they would like to encrease their knowledge to improve on their jobs.

nestor said...

Hello. I agree with Martin and Daniela in that new technologies are positive for the soviety. In this sense, one can think of N.M.R (Nuclear Magentic Resonance) devices for detecting tremors and preventing cancer to develop. This is so far a great achievement of science and of applied new technologies on the medical field. On the other hand, I cannot but coincide with Daniela in the disadvantages also. According to this, one can also think of the numerous workers that have been and are constantly being replaced on farms and industries thanks to the advance of new technologies. Workers who eventually will belong, transitorily or not, to that huge staff of unemployed people.

Jesica Lopez said...

Hi!
Well, I agree with all of you. I think that, as everything, New technologies can be good or bad acoording to the use we give them. They can be very useful when comunicating with people all around the world, finding information or with developments that can help the welfare of the humanity( medicine).However, there are other aspects of technology that can be very dangerous for us and our security. An example that cames into my mind is the problem with the information user´s security on the net. It can be said that it is one of the most important problems of our times.

Vanesa said...

In my opinion new technologies are positive in some cases. On the one hand, they are useful if you want to communicate with your relatives and friends around the world, if you have to find information or if you use them just for entertainment.We must be careful about the information we find on the net because some of it is useless and not reliable.On the other hand, new technologies are negative in the sense that they are replacing human beings at work.

Yanina said...

Hi!
I think new technologies have ingrained in the world to facilitate and improve our life in a wide variety of ways. I will share my own eperience. My father has never imagined to have his own cell phone. Now he has one, he is very pleased with it becuase he is getting used to writting again! In short, I think technology has been a viable invention!!!

Mariana said...

I think new technologies are very useful in general. Althoug certain people may use them with evil purposes and the fact that one seems to be depending on them all the time. We have to try to make good use of them and, as teachers, take them into the classroom because they are the future!!!.Quoting a famous Argentinian singer "future has come long ago" and is our job to reach it.

FLAVIA said...

In my opinion, new technologies are positive because people can communicate around the world.Besides,we can get the information we need,always taking into account the relevance and reliability of it...New technologies are part of the century in which we live.We can not live them aside,we have to incorporate them to our lives.

Vanesa said...

In my opinion, I agree with Flavia in the sense that new technologies are positive and they are useful for communicating people around the world. It is true that we have to incorporate them to our lives as a necessity for working or studing but we have to bare in mind that we have to use them properly.

Ye Pereyra said...

I am on the opinion that new technologies are very useful for people. On the net, for example, you can find a great variation of things in few minutes, or you can communicate with people from everywhere! But, I agree with Vanesa in the fact that it's important to use new technologies properly.

Susana Guaglianone said...

When we speak about technologies, I don´t know why we think of means of communication, so I discover that people spend many hours in front of a computer looking up information and for this, they don´t have enough time to sit at a table to "look up information" in the faces of their families or/and their friends to see what´s happening in their lives. Day after day the number of people using cell phones is increasing but it is possible that they don´t talk to anyone personally because everything is communicated by "phone messages". Besides, they don´t enjoy the relationship between their fingers and the pieces of paper of a book. They write literature by computer, they don´feel the pleasure of
"playing" with a pencil in a draft when they create poetry. They are technological creatures with technological routines and technological aims and dreams. The more technological they are, the more powerful and respectable they feel. Of course, that is the idea if we only connect the concept of "technology" with "communication".