Please kindly critique my first AWA
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09 May 2014, 22:23
I've made my first attempt at writing a response to an AWA question. I'd greatly appreciate some feedback from someone with knowledge of how to answer these questions.
Here it goes:
As people rely more and more on technology to solve problems, the ability of humans to think for themselves will surely deteriorate.
Write a response in which you discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the statement and explain your reasoning for the position you take. In developing and supporting your position, you should consider ways in which the statement might or might not hold true and explain how these considerations shape your position.
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The increased reliance on technology will not cause humans' ability to think to deteriorate, but instead it will create new opportunities for humans to think in different and deeper ways.
As the demand for new technology increases, so too does the demand for skilled people who can develop these new technologies. The development of technology to solve problems requires deep knowledge and analysis of the problem, which certainly encourages humans to think. For example, calculators have freed us from having to perform arithmetic using out minds, but calculators had to be developed to achieve this, and that development required intense thinking from the enginners that pionered the development of calculators. The engineers had to figure out how to use electrical signals to add numbers together, how to display numbers on a screen and how to store numbers in bits and bytes. People are now being freed from doing tedious tasks that can be automated through the use of technology so that they can focus on developing the technology itself. As people use more and more technology, there will be more opportunities to develop technology and more opportunity to engage in deep, independent thought.
As more technology becomes available, so does the availability of both good and bad technology, and best practices for using technology. People now need to think carefully about how to select the best technology for their needs and how to operate it to get the most out of it. For example, a grocery store manager that wants to start using a system to automatically order new products may be able to stop thinking about what needs to be ordered the next day, but he/she needs to start thinking about which system to use and how to best integrate it into his/her store. Once the system is in place, he/she needs to train staff to utilize the system to its greatest potential. The system stopped the manager from having to think about what to order, but created opportunities to think about many other issues instead, thereby not deteriorating his/her ability to think.
The use of technology can discourage thinking if it is used with no appreciation of how it works. For example, a student who uses a caulcator to multiply numbers without knowing how to multiply numbers by hand would be missing the ability to think about and understand the fundamentals of mathematics. In fact, the student may not be able to recognise when they use the calculator incorrectly and get a wrong answer.
The use of more technology allows humans to stop thinking about mundane tasks and instead start thinking about the complexities of how to create the technology that is being used more and more.