Technology In Brave New World

757 Words4 Pages
People today are obsessed with technology. The idea of leaving your phone off seems impossible. Consequently, these actions have lead people to speculate about the future as technology gets more advance and start replacing more things. In the novel Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, a reality not far from our own is explored. It depicts the worst features of our world, such as technology, consumerism, happiness and truth, and exaggerate them. Mustapha Mond, a character in the novel who holds the utmost authority in the world state, explains that “every discovery in pure science is potentially subversive; even science must sometimes be treated as a possible enemy.” (Huxley 225) Although some people think that the freedom of scientific research…show more content…
Today technology has improved the lives of thousands of people around the world. Not only has the average life span increased, but also the daily comforts of our life has tremendously changed in the last century. Richard Palazzo, the President of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology, states that “Americans are living longer, healthier lives” (Palazzo 1). One example of this is the invention of the hearing aid. The hearing aid first appeared in 1588, carved out of wood into the shape of ears that belong to animals with superior hearing. In the 1800s they were designed to be decorative accessories. By the mid-1900s they were smaller and could be adjusted towards any setting. Today hearing aids can fit on the tip of a finger and virtually invisible when worn. According to Jeanie Davis, a writer for WebMD, today’s hearing aid contains “a microcomputer that is much more sophisticated in responding to noise in the environment, so [people won’t] get feedback and echoes." (Davis 1) The evolution of the hearing aid is something that would never have happened under the strict control of the world state. If science was only used to solve a problem the most basic design of the hearing aid would have been sufficient. However due to freedom to explore the scientific realm people able to improve the lives of…show more content…
The idea of artificial intelligence was once just science fiction. However, in September of 2014 IPsoft, a company focused on automated intelligence, invented Amelia, an artificial intelligence platform. She is a virtual assistant that understand what people asks and even how they feel; she learns as she works while providing high quality responses consistently, and can learn same material as her human colleagues but in a matter of seconds. The fraction of the time it takes to train someone in a new role, Amelia is already able to perform that task at a high level. This may sound wonderful, but as these machines get faster and smarter what is the need for humans to perform a job that machines can do in seconds. Jane Wakefield, a technology reporter from BBC News, says that by 2025 a “quarter of jobs will be replaced by either smart software or robots.” (Wakefield 1) By then hundreds of people would have lost their jobs to machines and they have nothing to do about it. The unemployment rate would then sky rocket and society would turn into mass chaos. However it isn't just the fear of losing jobs that people are worried about. During an interview with Stephen Hawking, a theoretical physicist and Director of Research at the University of Cambridge says that “the development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race.”
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