What Backlashes of Technological Progress Are We Witnessing Today?

So far, there has been a lot of discussion going on around the technological advancements made. This year is considered of the prime importance in relation to the industrial revolution 4.0. Artificial intelligence, automation, robotics are no more buzz words or themes of science fiction.

However, like every other phenomenon, technological advancements are no less than a double-sided sword. If it has benefits, it comes with its own risks as well. And the time has come to discuss them.

The industries have been talking about the benefits they are going to reap out of automation and digital advancements. They will be in terms of improvement in quality, speed and cost of services. However, all these improvements have flip-sides too. In this article, we will go through the potential risks of the technological progress we are boasting about today.

1. Fear of slimming workforce: The most discussed apprehension which has come out of automation is- displacements of the existing workforce. There is a huge amount of fear of mass job loss with the deeper implementation of automation and technologies. The debate is not a new one. With every technological transition in the past, the question of job redundancy has been raised very frequently.

New job roles are always expected to come out of any advancement. However, this time, technological progress is being considered different and far more impactful than ever before and not many are sure about the new developments such as driverless cars.

Another reason why technological advancement is considered as a sign of danger is because we are unprepared to take up those jobs. Our workforce and education systems are still not upgraded to adopt the newly emerged technologies. This is highly likely to impact the workforce in a negative manner.

2. Widening gap of disparity: Every time a new technology touches new lands, the elite sections of the society are the first to receive and adopt it. The same is going to happen again in the case of the adoption of new technologies. Both in the developing as well as developed countries, the elites and the capable people are going to touch the technologies like AI and robotics first and reap its benefits, while others who are not capable enough to afford them, will be left behind in the race. This will give a further thrust to the already existing inequality in the society and widen the gap.

3. Constant pressure to stay updated and innovative: With the embarkment of the industrial revolution 4.0, the technologies are undergoing changes very rapidly. New technologies and their used cases are being surfaced on a very fast unprecedented pace. This has come down as a pressure on the technologists, industrialists and the entire workforce to stay updated of each and every development. Not only this, in order to be ahead of the race and top of everyone else, there is a constant need to innovate how we have been working.

4. Rising Security Concerns: One of the major loopholes that have come out of this technological advancement is that of security. It has been seen as a major danger. While we are getting connected smoothly with the help of digital technologies, it has made the work of hackers much easier to get into our lives through multiple anecdotes of connectivity. Cyber attacks are on a constant rise and companies are regularly discussing in their boardrooms as to how to prepare themselves against these attacks. If we want to master technological developments, we first need to learn the art of protecting us from its potential dangers.

5. Impact on personal lifestyles: We live in a society where professional developments do have a huge impact on our personal lives as well. We can not deny the fact that technological progress will be used just for industrial purposes. They will very much be evident in our personal lives as well and the impact of the same is not going to be a very rosy picture.

Tech, and mobile tech in particular allows us with the space to do a lot many things that we couldn’t have done earlier, from watching your favourite Netflix show to playing mobile casino games where you can pay by phone bill.

It is always creating a disconnect between human beings. People are constantly diving deep into their digital lives, forgetting the real physical human existence around them. This is clearly not a good output of the progress we have made.

As we mentioned above, every advancement comes with its own merits and demerits. As the species with brains who have created these technologies, there is a need for constant introspection as well to understand if we are utilizing the path what we made it for.