Promise And Peril Kurzweil Summary

855 words

Modern Technology:

Promising a Future of Doom or Life?

Modern technology will affect human life in the coming future, for better or for worse. Ray Kurzweil is a futurist, a scientist who specializes in predictions about the future. In his essay “Promise and Peril”, he proposes possible advantages and disadvantages of technological improvement in the world, and mentions greatness of technology that not only benefits human life, but also the dangers of its existence. Considering the pros and cons, Kurzweil takes a stance for the idea that future technology will benefit humanity. On the other hand, the environmental journalist Erica Etelson disagrees with Kurzweil’s idea. In her article “Is Modern Technology Killing US?”, she argues

Thus, the question concerning the status quo: whether the current technology benefits human life or causes harm to it. Kurzweil is a technology optimist and he believes that technology always benefits human life. At first, it seems that Etelson agrees with Kurzweil. In her first paragraph, Etelson states that she would not be the same person without technology. If readers stop reading at this point, they might be tricked into believing that Etelson is a pro-modern-technology. However, throughout the rest of her essay, she argues that technology often diminishes, rather than enriches quality of life. Many times, humans devalue life-affirming activities and ways of being. As technology improves, humans learn less and less of abilities and social skills. Although Etelson’s reasoning towards the end of her essay seems acceptable, the overall picture of her essay is confusing for the reader. The way that she argues for both sides makes her stance looks hypocritical. She wants technology to help the workload, while she argues that it creates harm to whom that uses

However, mankind should be concerned of the risks that lie beneath it. The big debate determining the future of modern technology are whether safety and utility will be able to catch up with the improvement of technology. In the early part of his essay, Kurzweil states that the development of technology grows exponentially instead of linearly. Exponential growth makes it seem as if the technology is improving too fast for human to handle it. Kurzweil refuses to believe so; he argues that as technology grows exponentially, precaution and safety regarding technology proportionally follows its trail. The way Kurzweil argues is by having a historical