TOEFL IBT Independent Writing, Technology always contributes to improving human society. - revised -

Writing Topic

Do you agree or disagree with the following statement? Technology always contributes to improving human society. Use specific reasons and examples to support your answer.

☆Let’s Think

1.      How do the following two sentences differ? Which do you think describes sports less accurately?

a.    Sports contribute to friendship.

b.    Sports always contribute to friendship.

2.      What is the difference between “the world” and “human society”? Do they overlap?

3.      Do you agree with the statement? Why or why not?

Notes

The word “always” is a key to answer this question. There are not many things that always happen. You may say to your friend, “You are always complaining about your sister,” but you do not literally mean it. You know she does many other things. Most things have exceptions. If some exceptions can be cited about the statement in a writing topic, the conclusion will be negative. 

☆Hints for Points

1.      Technology has helped cook better meals, wear more comfortable clothing, and build a shelter to avoid elements. It also helps transportation and communication. It helps us import and export goods and services. It allows those who are away from each other communicate with ease. It saves us time by doing routines. Dangerous jobs are done by technology. Jobs that are impossible by human hand can be done by technology. Many kinds of technologies make our lives richer and longer than before.

2.      Even if technology causes a problem, it makes up for it. All in all, technology makes our world better.

3.      It is difficult to say that human society has been improved as technology improved. For example, Yuval Noah Harari says that we were happiest when we were hunting and gathering, before we came up with irrigation, rice-paddy technology, which stole most of our free time and healthy diet.

4.      Pollution has caused many suffering and deaths. Although not affecting our life before, global warming has started biting because human society is part of the world.

5.      Victims of technological development will be unhappy forever. For example, atomic bombs made the victims’ lives shorter and/or hard and nothing can make up for this loss.

                                                                                                        

☆Essay for Ideas and Expressions

When it comes to the merits and demerits of technology, I think the following quote says it all:

“Technology is basically neutral. It’s kind of like a hammer. The hammer doesn’t care whether you use it to build a house, or whether a torturer uses it to crush somebody’s skull.” － Noam Chomsky – I cannot totally agree with the statement that technology always contributes to improving human society because technology is created and used by humans and humans are both good and bad.

Technology in itself is neither good nor bad. A hammer is basically neither good nor bad. Man uses it to do either good or bad things. You could replace the word hammer in the quote above with, say, a jet engine, atomic energy, information technology (IT), and so on. Then you could make similar sentences for the same idea:

A jet engine doesn’t care whether you use it to fly an airplane to carry people and goods over the oceans, or whether someone uses it to have a plane smash into a huge commercial building.

 Atomic energy doesn’t care whether a government uses it for power plants to light up its cities, or whether a state uses it to destroy a whole city and eliminate almost all of its population.

 Information technology doesn’t care whether people use it to share information to improve each other’s situation, or whether some SNS users end up with driving an actor to commit suicide.

Our nature and ignorance make technology both a boon and a curse. Technology can be used in both positive and negative ways depending on us humans, and humans have both positive and negative sides. We can be ill-intentioned, weak, or careless. Therefore, technologies are often used negatively to the benefit of the human race.

Also, our ignorance has made technology go out of control. What science knows is only a fraction of nature and technology is part of our society, which we do not remember the last time we controlled well. Thus, technology often causes results that no one could foresee. Antibiotics were discovered and developed to save lives, but in decades their overuse has created viruses called super bugs, antibiotic-resistant viruses. The development of transportation, by which humans and things spread around the world and which contributed to the development of some societies, impoverished many societies, contributed to global warming, and spread microorganisms and fungi, causing numerous deaths and threatening the future of the earth. Technology is almost always related to both positive and negative changes of society.

It is true that we have used technology to make our lives convenient. It is also true that we have used technology to overcome difficulties caused by technologies. However, the fact that technology has been the cause of countless number of degradation of life and death will not disappear no matter how wonderful an improvement we use technology for. Therefore, it cannot be said that technology always contributes to improving human society.

☆Making the Framework of the Full Essay

The basic English essay structure is as follows:

【Introduction = Outline】

【Reason 1】

【Reason 2】

【Reason 3】

【Conclusion = Wrap-up】

Now let’s make the framework of your full essay. Write down key words and expressions. You can use them as the main idea and examples for each paragraph of your full essay.

Sample framework notes:

【Introduction = Outline】 Disagree: a double edged sward; he who uses it can be both productive and unproductive

【Point 1】can be a weapon  e.g. atomic energy

【Point 2】can bring about disasters  e.g. oil well drilling technology

【Point 3】can degrade some part of the population  e.g. SNS

【Conclusion = Wrap-up】often negative effects on the development of human society

Your framework notes:

【Introduction = Outline】

【Point 1】

【Point 2】

【Point 3】

【Conclusion = Wrap-up】