My Technology

We have now carried out a survey into how individuals really feel about new expertise and its influence on individuals's domestic lives. We gave fifty five people a questionnaire and obtained replies from all however 4 of them. Twenty-4 of our respondents are youngsters and folks in their twenties, fifteen are of their thirties and middle-aged and the rest are retired. The four people who did not return their questionnaires are all within the thirty-plus age group.

We asked people how lots of the following examples of modern technology they possessed at residence - a computer, a cell phone, an answerphone, the Internet, a video camera, a microwave, a toaster, a DVD, a digital digicam, a jacuzzi. We additionally requested them to add any other examples of contemporary expertise which they also have got at home. We then requested them to point how much they used each of the gadgets of modern know-how that they reported possessing. Finally, we requested people to point out whether or not this stuff of contemporary know-how had a optimistic or a unfavourable impact on their lives. At this point in the questionnaire we requested our respondents so as to add comments explaining how exactly an item of know-how had affected their lives in either positive or adverse ways.

All of our respondents have at least two of the gadgets on our list with a microwave, a pc and DVD being the items most regularly possessed. Only one in every of our respondents possesses a Jacuzzi. Three of the respondents have all the different objects but the jacuzzi. Many of the respondents added at the very least one different example of recent expertise: these included automatic washing machines, vacuum cleaners, electrical ovens, MP3 players. The youthful the respondent, the more doubtless they are to use all of the objects they have besides the DVD and the washing machine. These were hottest with the over-thirties. Of all the objects of recent expertise we listed, the video digicam was least continuously used - only a couple of times a month by the teenagers and rarely by older age groups.

After we asked folks whether they felt that new applied sciences were affecting their lives in a constructive or a unfavorable way, all of the teenagers and 87% of the people in the center age group said that they felt that the effects of latest technologies have been principally positive. Sixty-three p.c of the respondents felt that new applied sciences also have some destructive results on their lives. The most frequent advantages of new applied sciences are (in order of frequency of mention):

1. Saving time;
2. Enjoyable;
3. Making communications simpler;
4. Convenient to make use of;
5. Educational.

The unfavorable results talked about had been:
1. Harms health;
2. The machines are all the time going unsuitable;
3. Makes use of too much electrical energy;
4. Technology makes individuals lazy;
5. Distracts from studying;
6. The machines are at all times going wrong.

In conclusion, new expertise is having a significant impact on domestic life. For most individuals, particularly younger, these results are positive. Older people, though they use know-how only marginally less than young individuals do, discover it more durable to adapt to it and are more likely to see the issues in our dependence on it than are teenagers.          


MF