Technology; Helpful or Hurtful? Everyday we hear about the astounding technological advances discovered year after year. Thirty years ago, who would have thought that we would soon be able to communicate with a person half way around the world through a computer? The possibilities of technology are endless and beyond belief, but are these possibilities always beneficial in society, or are they causing more harm then help? Authors Pete Hamill, Grant Fjermedal and Roger Rosenblat take a look at certain forms of technology and the beneficial and detrimental aspects that have and will come from its advances. The family television is one of the oldest, most loved pastimes, and is thought to be one the greatest inventions. By the push of a button a person can leave their problematic life and live the perfect one of their favorite soap star, action hero or villain. In other words, with the push of a button a person is simply taken out of reality. Pete Hamill, the author of the article, “Crack and the Box,” dives further into the effects of the invention of the television and influence it has the generation raised with it. Hamill relates the drug epidemic of today with the increase of televisions believing they work on the same level. Like television, drugs take their user out of reality and into a different world. Hamill is a firm believer that televisions have had a dominant role in the great increase in current drug use. In 1955, when televisions were less than six times the number they are today, there were a mere 1,234 felony drug arrests; in 1988 that number rose to 43,901 (Hamill 374). That could coincidence of facts but according to Hamill our cherished television is to blame. TV is just one of the millions of pieces of technology. It is in no way as sophisticated as others, like the computer, yet it may be a prominent cause for one of the world’s largest problems, drug abuse. If something as old and simple as the te...
