Are we too dependent on computers? Essay

When we talk about computers, people often relate computers with modern technologies. Computer is a tool that helps us make things in our life easier. People use computers in business, public services, educations, even entertainment. Our daily activities are more and more based closely on the working of computer. Almost everything we do is affected by modern technology and computers. I would say that I agree that people nowadays depend on computers too much. Firstly, computers controlled cars, planes, ships and other vehicles, so that we can travel safely. Computer is the backbone of most institutions and colleges nowadays. Computer is a popular device among college students. Students get their assignments done using computer. It is convenient for them to search for information using computer or through online library rather than going to library. They save their files in the computer and use computer to make their presentation. Lecturers and students prefer to use computer to work on assignments if it relates to paper work. Moreover, there are plenty students use their computer to take courses and study online. Computer is a convenient device for students. Speaking of health systems, many hospitals and medical offices use computer to store all the patients’ data. It is easy to keep track and is accessible. Medical officer also store important works that are needed to be recorded and stored for health purpose in the computers. The use of computers is very important even in medical field. More and more hospitals use computers to store patients’ data instead of using paper. It will be messy and a lot of paperwork needed to be done if hospitals didn’t use computers. It will also pollute the environments that so many paper works needed to be stored. All the mental work that we need to do can be done by computer or calculator. It would be almost impossible to calculate a huge statistic data w ithout using a calculator. Computers play an important role in human life. Computers allow office workers to work from home too. Computers help us to keep in touch with friends or families that live too far away to visit. We are also exposed to information and knowledge. We can release our stress by playing the computer games when we come home from work or school. People have increasingly relied on computers nowadays. Moreover, people tend to become lazy to think with presence of computer and technology. Most people rely on computers too much will make them forget their own strengths. People are concerned that vital skills can be lost by next generations as computer technology slowly replaces the traditional ways of working. However, computer affects human health if human spend most of their time facing the computer. When we are asked whether we face the computer most of the time, most of us choose to deny or ignore it because we are scared to admit it. Denial or ignorance is a type of resistance. In a research, people are highly exposed to health risks as they spend most of their time sitting in front of the computers to get their work done. We will have eye pain and backache if we face the computer over a long period. We will also face tired eyes, dizziness and other symptoms. This will also affect other parts of our body, such as brain, neck and fingers. We should not deny or ignore these health symptoms as it could affect our life. Let’s imagine if one day, your computer breakdown, will your life in a mess? People work and do their jobs using computers. People save all their documents in their computers as they think that computer is the safest place to keep documents. Entrepreneurs run their business using computers. However, there is a possibility that the computer will breakdown. A serious chaos will happen. Once the computer system fails to operate, people really can’t do anything. People will just sit down and wait for the engineer to repair it. The business will also be affected. In serious scenario, the entrepreneurs will lose millions of business and money. Although it is said that people fall into the fallacy of slippery slope, break down of computer systems really happen in real life. For example in May 15, 2011, Kuala Lumpur Stock Exchange (KLSE) experienced a breakdown in computer systems. The stock exchange came to a standstill for about 5 hours. Most of us also have the misconception that we are in control. Actually we are not. Nobody knows what is going to happen in the future. We can’t really control the computer systems but we can try our best to make sure that computer systems work smoothly. As far as I concerned, computer is a great invention and it is useful to human life. It should be impossible to live without computer as we get too much used of computers nowadays. However, we should use it wisely. We know the fact that the more we rely on computer, the more we will lose in our life. So, we should also find ways to make our dependence on computers less dangerous to us, so that we will not rely on computer completely.