Science and technology

Technology and science: With or against human kind?

Technology and science are two topics that some people consider the same while in reality it’s not. It’s true that both can help each other but technology wouldn’t exist if science wasn’t present, just because science is the group of knowledge that we have acquired throughout our lives and that, applied to technology, is what makes itpossible, that is, if we don’t know how to use something we can’t consider it as technology; In Mario Bunge’s words: “A group of knowledge can be considered to be technology if and only if it is controlled by the scientific method and if it is used for controlling, transforming or creating things or processes”.

What we all know for sure is that once we get to know technology, it is hard for us to livewithout it, but we barely stop to think in the role of science and technology in human’s life and the repercussions that they have on it, sometimes good, some others bad, for that matter I will use the next quote to illustrate myself:

“Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage - to move in the oppositedirection.”- E. F. Schumacher.

This famous quote of Schumacher really made sense to me and I think it fits perfectly with all the lectures, because while some inventions are beneficial for the human beings regarding health, economy, comfort, etc. some others are used to kill, destruct or to cause damage and the rest are just a prove of what science and technology together are capable of but they haveno good or bad impact regarding society, they are just there.

In the case and examples exposed in “dolly the sheep” we can get that sometimes the things that are harder to create or that are pretty astonishing, in the long run are useless for men’s sake. That’s the case of Dolly the sheep and the space trip for example, both of them involve a lot of technology and are incredibly amazing butthey invest a lot, getting few or maybe no payback; in other words, they can’t make a business out of it nor cover the needs of the society.

On the contrary, some other people like Bill Gates or Steve Jobs, (mentioned in the reading as well), were those ones “moving in the opposite direction” by creating things that besides being innovative could help people on their daily activities, and notonly that, but as mentioned above, they could help science as well by introducing more software that could support or back up different kind of researches. This was useful in many ways: for human kind, for science and even for economics as it was really profitable since everyone would want that new Ipad or the other software and so forth. Those inventions were a masterpiece in every sense of theword.

Now, according to the “Using case studies to introduce environmental and economic considerations” reading, the use of science and technology will always have pros and cons which scientists have to take into account. For that, it’s necessary to teach new students the relationship between society and chemistry for example, using the problem-based learning technique which involves differentcases. In those cases, a problem is exposed and the students have to solve it by thinking which is the best way that is going to bring the best outcome, all that, achieved by applying the skills they already have and of course, ethics that is supposed to lead them to the best way of using them without harming anyone. Then, after getting their own results, sharing their ideas with each other isanother important step in the learning process, since people think in a different way and therefore they may see different advantages and disadvantages of using or not using whatever it’s being tested.

To illustrate what it’s said above, there’s the following quote:

“Technology... is a queer thing. It brings you great gifts with one hand, and it stabs you in the back with the other.”- Carrie P....