GRE® Essay: Technology cannot change the condition of humanity.

[Konstantin]

Hello!
Question:
"Humanity has made little real progress over the past century or so. Technological innovations have taken place, but the overall condition of humanity is no better. War, violence, and poverty are still with us. Technology cannot change the condition of humanity."
Answer:
In assertion that new technologies have not changed the condition of humanity the speaker fails to acknowledge some apparent examples of their positive effect on our lives. Nevertheless, I tend to agree with him that technology themselves could not alone deal with problems like war, poverty or violence; however, they could effectively help us to do so.

Technological innovations have modified the appearance of our world. Not so far ago, it was hard to imagine that a person could talk with his friend, living on the other site of the Atlantic Ocean; that one could go anywhere on a flying machine or he could prepare dinner just in minutes. Despite on many negative effects of the new technologies, like the emergence of the greenhouse effect, I believe that advantages outweigh all drawbacks. Manifold innovations facilitate our daily life, making it more pleasant and happier. For instance, advanced medical care helps us to successfully struggle with severe deceases; the Internet’s expansion provides children in Africa and Asia with up-to-date knowledge and so on. As the result, the progress, caused by new technology, is apparent.

However, new inventions could not overcome poverty, war or similar problems. These disasters are profound for human nature and only changing our minds we could eliminate them. One may argue that the number of violence has been reduced dramatically, in comparison with the previous century, because living conditions have been greatly improved. On contrary, today, a lot of offences are committed in the virtual space and they could cause quite dramatic effect on the society. At the same time, I am convinced that new technology should help us to eliminate these problems. New agricultural techniques provide the humanity with surplus of food, reducing poverty in the most problematic spots of the planet like Central Africa. Communicating with other nationalities through the Internet, people are becoming more tolerant to each other that might reduce a risk of ethnic violence.

Finally, I want to reinforce the point that new technologies give us possibility to make our world better and to change the condition of humanity completely. Some inventions, like nuclear weapons could be considered ambiguously: from one point of view they cause great threat for everything on the planet, from the other, nuclear arsenals have been preventing the next global conflict, similar to the Second World War. New green technologies provides us with the clean power, new robots substitute people on the dangerous workplaces and new media techniques give us the possibility to be closer to our relatives everywhere.

In sum, new technologies have been changing the face of our planet and it is the irreversible process. And I believe that they cause prosperity, not the decadence of the humankind.

[Marcheeba]

Man I think this is a great essay...