• Question: Can technology/science go too far?

    Asked by anon-181683 on 21 Jun 2018.
    • Photo: Nathan Clarke

      Nathan Clarke answered on 21 Jun 2018:

      Great question 🙂 Science is a process and gives us a set of tools – it’s simply a way of thinking about the world. This process gives us technology. Technologies are really just an advancement on what we had before. A pencil would be amazing, scary technology to a caveman. Scientists are just people and PEOPLE need to be responsible with technology and can certainly go too far with it (this is also known as being unethical). For instance, a caveperson could be given their amazing new technology (a pencil) and then decide to stab somebody with it. This would be the misapplication of a technology. As with everything else in life, there are good and bad choices. The pencil example may seem silly but it illustrates a broad point. With a technology like a pencil, we can only really hurt one person, but the technologies we are beginning to command mean we can affect many, many people. We definitely need to make sure we’re using technology properly, but I think we’d all be a lot worse off if the pencil was never invented 😉

    • Photo: Leo Beacroft

      Leo Beacroft answered on 21 Jun 2018:

      Yes, often the best minds end up doing what we’d consider to make bad or dangerous uses of science. For example, in the 1940s many physicists worked on developing an atomic bomb. Albert Einstein was actually involved in getting this work started after he wrote to the president of the US at the time.

      There will be many other uses of science / technology that have the potential to be dangerous to humanity and even the whole world. Artificial intelligence and combined with advances in robotics could mean that dangerous weapons could be developed that could operate without human control. Often the scientists involved in developing a new technology might not be fully aware of how it will be used. Trying to predict these dangerous possibilities is something that I think we should focus on in the future.

      Thanks for your question, do you think there are any technologies that will (or have already) gone too far?

    • Photo: Ashley Akbari

      Ashley Akbari answered on 24 Jun 2018:

      In short yes – but this should not hold us up investigating and testing new and innovative methods, science and technology – but always with controls and governance in place to make sure that we are doing things for the right reasons and with the right outcomes in mind

    • Photo: Lauren Burns

      Lauren Burns answered on 26 Jun 2018:

      I agree with Nathan, at the end of the day, the technology created by science on its own isn’t a problem. It is people who abuse/misuse the technology to cause harm rather than do good ruin technology for the rest of us.

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