Technology is knowledge of the process and techniques that transforms the abstract ideas of scientists and mathematicians into a concrete reality. It is the knowhow that enables us to extract the raw materials and then convert them into fuel, steel, chemicals, plastics and food.
Technology is also concerned with the perfection of industrial processes, mass production and automation. The advancing technology implies pollution, the exhaustion of natural resources and the lack of workers’ satisfaction in automated factories. Hence, technology is a two-edged weapon.
The chemical industry has grown a lot during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It turned natural rubber into a material that is to be used on an industrial scale. New discoveries like plastic, artificial fibers and synthetics were made.
Dynamos and electric motors gave fillip to technological development. Henry Ford added a new dimension to industrial technology. These development in technology led to serious problems of unemployment, squandering of material resources and social dislocation of humans.
Biotechnology and the manipulation of man’s own body, made spectacular advances after the Second World War. An array of drugs to combat diseases was produced. By saving life, it contributed towards the population explosion.
Tranquillizers, stimulants and psychotherapeutic drugs for controlling mental process assumed great importance. No doubt, they helped the medical profession but they also created a grave social crisis when they became generally available.
Computers have opened up new vistas. These can make any number of calculations, simulations of particular hypothetical situations can be produced and studied. These have created the problem of unemployment.
Sometimes, mechanical calculations may do harm to other people and nations Space technology poses a great danger to the world if it is used for polluting the environment.
Technology has made man mechanical in outlook, ruthless in attitude, materialistic in thinking and cold and calculative in behaviour. So, technology has created psychological, social and other human problems.
