Topic 81 Has technology made the world a better place to live?

A great many achievements have been accomplished in recent decades in almost every area of technology, such as in computer science, manufacture, and medicine. But there have always existed two opposite attitudes towards technological development. Some people agree that these new technologies have made the world a better place to live, while others hold the opinion that technology has caused many problems to the world. As far as I am concerned, I agree with the first opinion that our world is becoming better for living with technology progress. Several persuasive reasons go as follow.

Firstly, technology developments have greatly improved people's living conditions, making our life more convenient and efficient. We have elevators taking us to the top of a skyscraper in just a few seconds; we have air conditioners to keep the indoor temperature comfortable; and we even have household robots now to help to take care of the trivial housework. Secondly, technology developments have also made communications much easier, and thus helped to enhance relationships among people. The wide use of pagers, mobile phones, and wireless Internet has greatly facilitated the way of daily communication. They can bring people so close even though they may actually be thousands of miles apart.

Thirdly, developments in technology can provide better medical access to make people live a healthier and happier life. By taking advantages of the most recent developments in biotechnology, such as genetic engineering, I am convinced that people will have a promising prospect (многообещающая перспектива) in treating all kinds of human diseases, including AIDS and SARS.

It is true that technological developments have also brought some serious problems. One of them is that some technological developments have done harm to the environment. For example, too much emission of waste gases, mainly carbon dioxide, has increased the global temperature significantly. However, people can reduce and finally eliminate these harmful effects by improving the technology itself or finding a more advanced and reliable

technology.

I believe that with the new technologies appropriately (надлежаще) adopted (внедрённые, позаимствованные) for good purposes, our world would be made an even better place to live.