Free Tec 393 Technologies In World Civilization Essay Sample

Having heard about the dependence of potatoes in Ireland and its aftermath, it is obvious that it parallel the events of the early twenty-first century and our dependence on computer technology. Just like the dependence on potatoes by the Irish was later stopped by the emergence of the serious bloat disease. The disease forced them to migrate. The dependence on transistors and integrated circuits(IC) was also affected by sudden inefficiency. The inefficiency was due to the weakness of such electronic devices which could not permit them to handle the vast amount of jobs within the require time. It led to the migration to microprocessors that have all other electronic components built within it to help execute the job demands at the enhanced speed with the improved accuracy.
The effect of mono-cropping that lead to massive starvation was a challenge for the Irish to seek for another alternative in order to solve the problem. The same thing applies to events of the twenty-first century. In the twenty-first century, over-dependence on a given technology for economic gain has always come with disappointment at a particular point in time whereby migration has to take place from using the current technology to a new one. For instance, a million large computers were used in 1940’s. These computers produced much heat, had low processing speed, were less accurate and thus became inefficient at a certain point in time. As a result, migration had to happen to tens of millions of personal computers that were smaller in size. These personal computers had improved processing speed and accuracy. More so they produced less heat. The challenges of dissatisfaction with every level of technology in our case can be equated to the massive starvation that was caused by mono-cropping of potatoes in Ireland.
The need to improve further in the economy continued to result in more and more changes. As a result, advancement in technology continued to take place. From personal computers came hundreds of millions of programmable calculators that made computation work extra easier and accurate. Then migration moved to the famous micro processors which were built into other machines. These microprocessors were speedier and more accurate. On addition, the microprocessors themselves continued to advance into various stages from 80286, 80386,80488 up to Pentium 1, pentium2 all the way Pentium 5 that is currently being used. It is because of this migration that the current computers that uses the latest microprocessors are at present more reliable in various area of the economy. The areas range from education, business, health sectors, government and many other areas. Just like potatoes and dependence in mono-cropping ended in Ireland during the nineteenth century, so did the use of unreliable electronic devices. These devices include transistors, integrated circuits, large computers and the like also ended gradually in the twenty-first century.
There are two options that the society will have to choose in case all computers and all another equipment that uses micro-processors suddenly stopped working. The first option is to go back to the former manual system of document production, processing and information retrieval. The second option is to discover any possible technology that is more advanced than micro processors. This second option can be considered because all another technological advancement above were coming gradually depending on the failure of the existing one. If micro-processor fails, then it should also be possible to advance to any next possible technology that is more superior in terms of speed, efficiency accuracy and reliability. The same case applies to the Potatoes and the mono-cropping in Ireland that could only be replaced by another alternative when the existing crop happened to fail due to the outbreak of the bloat disease.
In other words, it is as the existing solution having to fail or reach appoint of unsatisfactory to the economic level of gain in order for a society to think faster about the alternative course of action. In case the first option is taken of going back to the traditional approach of document processing and storage, then this will mean several steps backwards that will compromise the economy in nearly all sectors. As a result, the history of potatoes failure is likely to repeat itself in such a situation. It is also apparent that every discovery is spearheaded by new economic demands of the society. It is where the second option of coming up with a discovery to replace micro-processor will come in. In addition, the historical trend of technology advancement shows that better technologies will always emerge for economic purposes immediately the current one fails or get compromised.
The two examples of potatoes and computer technology migration can help us learn a number of lessons. One is that nothing is perfect for ever and therefore we should always be prepared for a change at any time given that both potatoes and computers show that we are living in the world of total uncertainty. The second lesson we as a society ought to learn is that we should not always place all our hope in one thing however perfect it may be at that moment. It is because every good thing will always come with the shortcoming part of it. The third lesson we can deduce from the two examples again is that the end of one thing marks the beginning of life for the next thing with similar but better quality and performance.