Technology did more good than harm this decade
Here is how most people think technology works: You have a problem you need to solve or a task you need to accomplish, and then you use technology to do it. Technology, in other words, is a tool. In the era of social media and the smartphone, people had needs — to connect with others, to find out information, to entertain themselves — and tech provided a solution.
The trouble, we now know, is that in providing solutions to some problems, technology created a whole host of others. Having the world's information at your fingertips lets you slip into a bubble of your own reality; finding like-minded people across the globe can give hatred a home; and having a social feed with all sorts of people can lead to rancour and polarization.
So as the decade draws to a close, instead of the celebratory tone people used in the 2000s when discussing technology, the conversation is laced with skepticism. Is this truly the decade when tech lost its way?
The Week.com, By Navneet Alang, December 23, 2019
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