xxiv) Technologies Impact

Technology's impact has been to "speed things up" so that people want an immediate response - irrespective of accuracy and/or quality of information. This speeding up has been described as "grab and go" and can have a negative impact on work/life balance.

An example of the increasing pace of technological uptake is electricity versus smart phones
"...It took nearly 50 years for electricity use to spread from major cities to urban and rural outpost. Smart phones have reached the same level of usage in just 4 years..."
Duncan Hughes, 2017

With technical innovation there can be some unintended and unpredicted consequences.

Some examples:

- Internet (it was initially anticipated that it would democratise information, ie more people would have access to accurate information when they required it. It was not anticipated that it would be a source of misinformation like fake news, extremist propaganda, be part of the surveillance economy, etc)

- Automobiles (replacing horses with automobiles inadvertently invented or led to auto dealers, service stations, drive-in movie theatres or restaurants, road infrastructure, suburban life, mobile populations, consumption of fossil fuel, air pollution, road injuries and deaths, etc. Not all these consequences were anticipated and/or positive.)

- Aeroplanes (encourage tourism, families living apart, overnight package delivery services, etc)

- Cargo ships (encourage infrastructure, like ports, basis for globalisation, etc)

- Einstein's most famous formula

(source: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/apr/05/einstein-equation-emc2-special-relativity-alok-jha )

The above formula (E=mc2) was developed by Einstein in the early 20th century. It showed the relationship between energy and mass; is linked with special relativity. It basically states that energy (E) in a system (an atom, a person, the solar system) is equal to its mass (m) multiplied by the square of the speed of light (c), ie equal to 186,000 miles per second. He demonstrated that energy and mass are not just mathematically related, they are different ways to measure the same thing.
"...Mass is just a super concentrated form of energy......these things can turn from one form to the other and back again..."
Aloh Jha, 2014

The nuclear industry exploited this idea. Thus the development of nuclear weapons was an unintended consequence of Einstein's famous formula.