How Technology Affects Our Everyday Lives

Today we live in the information age. Access to information has become crucial to success and power. The Internet combined with multimedia is entering every area of our lives – college, work and home. This digital technology combines texts, video, sound and graphics. It provides an entry to libraries, research institutions, databases, art galleries, etc. For those interested in intercultural communication, cyberspace is a universal community, with instant access not only to information, but also to friends around the globe.

Thus, technology affects everything from communication to entertainment and medicine to convenience.

We are constantly connected with our iPhones, laptops, Facebook and Twitter. We all can’t imagine living life without our cell phones and social media which make our communication easier and available at any time.

If we look at entertainment and cinema over the last 80 years we can see the vast improvements in the quality and reality of the scenes and it is all thanks to advancements in technology. Just take the original King Kong from the 1930s and the remake of the same movie in 2005. The remake is more lifelike and the scenes are more believable when a giant gorilla is roaming the streets. Then adding the advancement of 3D technology brought movies and TV to a whole new level with movies like Avatar.

The healthcare industry has seen the greatest benefits of technology. Because of technological progress we can more accurately diagnose and treat certain forms of diseases.

There is a touch of technology in everything that we do: credit cards, cell phones, ATMs, online banking, computer technology in our cars, laptops and portable devices, just to name a few. Technology continues to make our lives more and more convenient. We can be more productive in a day, and accomplish more in a lifetime than our great grandparents ever thought about.

Technology is going on to evolve and reinvent itself every day. We are constantly adapting and adopting these, once crazy, inventions into our everyday lives. One of the most exciting new areas of computer research is virtual reality. It creates the illusion of being in an artificial world created by computers. Technology is intended to make our lives easier. While we can sometimes feel like throwing our computers out the window, or going on vacation just to get away from all the buzzing, beeping, and being too connected, ultimately technology gives us a wealth of opportunities to have more comfortable lives.

Answer the questions:

1. What opportunities does the Internet provide us with?

2. What spheres of life does technology affect nowadays?

3. What has changed in the entertainment industry? In medicine?

4. What is virtual reality?

5. Technology makes our lives convenient and easier, doesn’t it?

Complete the following sentences:

1. Technological breakthroughs have brought great benefits to our home lives. You only have to look around to see all these home ... such as … .

2. New devices have also made a major difference to the way we work. For example, many people do much of their work from home online using … .

3. It is difficult to imagine our studies without technology. Take, for example, personal computers which allow students to … .

Do you know?

* A computer that was completely modern in conception was designed in the 1830s. The inventor of that 19-th century computer was Charles Babbage, a genius, whose other inventions include the ophthalmoscope, the skeleton key and the speedometer.

* The honor of being the world’s first computer programmer belongs to Augusta Ada Byron, later Countess of Lovelace, the daughter of the poet Lord Byron.

Now read the text.