Class Supplement (TOEFL Essay Writing, The impact of computers - Rewrite -)

Writing Topic: How do you think computers have affected the world we live in?


Essay for ideas and expressions:

The impact of the computer is like that of electricity. With the spread of computers, the world has transformed dramatically into the one where we can no longer live without them, different lifestyles and new things are created, and more democratic society is possible.

Just like electricity, computers have become ubiquitous and indispensable. They are in almost all kinds of machines such as cell-phones, TVs, elevators, cash machines, factory robots, medical equipment, and air traffic control systems. A day would not pass without them. Also, the computer has become part of infrastructure. The world is now connected by the Internet, which facilitates business, communication and many other activities. No organization can function well, totally cut off from the Internet.

The computer has changed how things are done and has created new things. It facilitates faster, more accurate, and better designed jobs from calculation and document-making to trading to spaceship building. Household work is not an ordeal anymore thanks to electric appliances with built-in computers. As the computer evolves, scientific research and development is exponentially expedited and art and entertainment create things that did not exist in the pre-computer age. The World Wide Web has globalized everyday communication. People can now receive and, more importantly, send out information across the world.

The computer has given people chances to change systems for the better, into more decentralized and transparent ones. In business, small business owners can now sell their products directly to consumers online, thus reshaping the distribution channels. In politics, employees who happen to find confidential information that the general public should know, such as reports of human rights abuses and corruptions, can reveal it through the whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks by sending it massive amounts of raw data anonymously, and people who are more informed now owing to such leaks can organize nationwide demonstrations with worldwide supports to stand up against corrupt leaders using social networking services such as Twitter and Facebook.

I think it can be said that many more people’s lives have become more colorful and freer than before since Windows 95 made it possible for most businesses and ordinary citizens to make use of personal computers and fiber-optic cables connected continents. Although there are concerns about problems related to computer use and occasional nostalgia for life before computers, the computer keeps breaking new ground and benefitting people. It is a phenomenon of the scale that involves all the people on this planet whether they have it or not and whether they like it or not.