The 2017 Future of Technology Summit Essay Winner - USA - Middle School

Middle school winner | USA

WINNER: ANDREW GLASSFORD

Teacher: Lisa Lawrenz

School: Highlands School, Birmingham, Alabama

Topic: A Blanket To Be Torched

“Whenever I hear people speak of 'technology', the accompanying tone is the same that accompanies the words 'government' or 'economy'. This all-encompassing, inevitable, unchangeable feel seems to accompany the word everywhere and everywhen it is spoken. As if the entire subject was predetermined, as if it were an unstoppable entity, as if any single breakthrough will redefine our world as we know it. This blanket term is a fallacy.”

Honorable Mentions

• Donovan Clark, Golda Meir School. Teacher, Jeff Sokolowki

• Connor Gable, Rainbow Valley Elementary School. Teacher, Ms Garvey

• Joshua Harris, The Dunham School. Teacher, Sheri Goings

• Sabrina Howell, Forest Ranch Charter School. Teacher, Mallory Bodney

A Blanket To Be Torched, by Andrew Glassford

Whenever I hear people speak of 'technology', the accompanying tone is the same that accompanies the words 'government' or 'economy'. This all-encompassing, inevitable, unchangeable feel seems to accompany the word everywhere and everywhen it is spoken. As if the entire subject was predetermined, as if it were an unstoppable entity, as if any single breakthrough will redefine our world as we know it. This blanket term is a fallacy.

Technology is no one thing. No single advancement, no one idea. And neither does it develop fully throughout the world. If the same attention to portable computers was given to energy production, we might very well have functioning tokamaks in place. Because of popular interest, computing power has increased exponentially, and power companies are still burning coal like they did fifty years ago. Granted, the power industry has begun to switch to other fuels, but in the time computers went from solely military prototypes to consumer products that can easily outpower lunar landers, electricity creation has gone from coal and a slight bit of nuclear power, to coal, nuclear power, and a slight bit of natural gas. This massive difference is but one of countless examples of how the overarching term of 'technology' is a fallacy.

Radio-frequency identity tags, or RFID tags, are amazingly powerful tools for profiling items. A handheld scanner can easily detect an RFID tag from five feet away, yet many warehouses still use barcodes, which need scanners to be within inches of the code, and the code must be printed onto the box, whereas an RFID tag could be unceremoniously tossed into a box and still serve its function as if it had been placed into a box with surgical precision. Another great 'technology' that exists and is developed, but not used. Another great example of the fallacy of assuming that technology will advance in all areas.

The future of technology is not going to be an all-around advancement. It will be small pushes here and there, with a breakthrough that will catapult a few areas forward. That is simply the nature of the world, because the actual technological advancements themselves are not the only factor in when and where they are implemented. Economic sense, popular demand, and public interest are as important if not more so in determining the usefulness of technology. So the next time you hear the word 'technology', think about what it actually means, what it actually is. As for the irrational fear of apocalypse-by-machine, humans would be much more of an asset to machine learning than they would be a hinderance for a long time. STOP STOP STOP.