Technology. Our Friend or Foe?

Science and technology we can for sure say has affected individuals personal experience. Whether that is a negative or positive experience, or in most cases a mix of both. The effect of science and technology and its effect on social media and influence on people worldwide has been drastic. Social media has taken the world by storm, with science and technology a close second behind.

As a young adult in the twenty-first century I can speak from first hand experience how science and technology has positively and negatively impacted my personal experiences.

Starting with my first example of the evolution of technology, the use of editing, or to be more specific, the use of photoshop. In earlier stages of development, photoshop was a brilliant idea. Edit photos for advertisements, make the vacation pictures from Hawaii a tad bit more blue, an edit for your deceased relative, or even special cases editing an individual out of a picture after a falling out.

Growing up as a kid with technology growing just as fast as me, the turn from photo/video editing as a means to tidy up some ends, to the complete transformation of what the perfect human being should look like was subtle but oh so deep. As a child we mimic what we see, so what happens to a young girl growing up seeing the precedent example of a typical woman being portrayed as a real life barbie.

How is she supposed to feel, looking down at her soft growing belly wondering why she doesn’t look like the girl in the magazines. What that little girl doesn’t know is that behind that picture is hours of work and hours of editing. With toned abs that were acquired in the gym after hours, perfect figure, perfect waist. But all she sees is the after result, why do I not look like that? Why does my stomach have a little pudge? Why do I have stretch marks?

As a young girl I wish someone taught me that I looked exactly how I was supposed to look at that age. Of course a growing girl has a bit of a stomach, proportions are going to be uneven, and that is completely normal. As a young child growing into a woman, I almost knew nothing else other than these beautiful women edited to flawless perfection. This made me always question myself. In every aspect of my life as well. Wondering what I was doing wrong, why I didn't look like the perfect woman in the magazines. This insecurity fueled by the unrealistic expectations of women only grew over the years. Except instead of magazines it was phones that every time you refreshed another idealized version of the perfect human that you didn’t look like. Insecurity at your fingertips, and to no one’s shock the editing has evolved so much to the point it is even harder to distinguish between real and fake.

As technology grew, so did the unrealistic expectations of a typical human being. It seemed as if everyone around me was struggling with the same insecurities, except we tried to hide it under snapchat filters and photoshop. It was a constant competition to see who had the most likes, the best body, the best instagram feed, and this was all before I even got into high school. I remember being a child and asking my own mother if I was overweight because of my growing body, and even though I was a toddler I was so confused as to why I did not look like the models in pictures. When does it end? Does it end when I achieve the perfect body, the perfect face, the perfect way of life?

It seems to be never ending with technology always finding a new way to set an unrealistic expectation. In terms of looking at the negative results of the advancement of science and technology this is the largest negative effect. With negatives also came positives however, not all advancement of science and technology are negative.

The advancement of science and technology has led to several amazing discoveries. The positive effect it has had on the criminal justice community is one of the most profound to me because it is my area of work I would love to be professionally a part of. Technology and science have always been used in cases of processing evidence and convicting criminals. The use of video forensics and DNA forensics would have not been made possible if it weren’t for growing technology. It has led to many unsolved cases being solved up to thirty years later. It has led to the clearance of an innocent man’s conscience and prison sentence.

DNA evidence has set innocent individuals free, and put heinous criminals behind bars to pay for the crimes they have caused. With the advancement of technology, it has branched out the sub fields of forensics to just about anything you can think of. Technology has made it impossible to commit a crime without it bouncing back on you in some type of form of evidence.

This raises the question as to what is next, how will our society look in fifty years now as technology continues to evolve as fast as it is. Will we continue to go down the rabbit hole of bouncing back between negative and positive outcomes?

Or will we take a drastic turn for the worst and go down a dark road where technology is the superior and we are the inferior. Or perhaps it will take a complete positive route. Our technology and science will continue to evolve and positively affect individuals around the world. Unfortunately this is just too unrealistic.

The road of where science and technology will take us as a society is long and unknown. As a society we can only hope the positives will outweigh the negatives as it continues to evolve. What will our future even begin to look like? Hopefully for our humanities sake it will be the positive and light road.