More work can be done by machines instead of hands. Is it positive or negative? The past century has seen that machines are widely applied in many domains as to industry and agriculture. While some people, who claim that returning to the natural states is the most suitable lifestyle, criticize the mechanization, I personally believe that machines have brought vantages outweigh the drawbacks overall as well as my threefold reasons in this easy. First of all, it is an undeniable fact that mechanization has contributed to enrich the material needs for the entire society due to the increasing production efficiency along with the reducing production cost, both caused by machinery. If various machines have not been invented, we have to culture foodstuffs and make furniture manually, which seemingly would happen hundreds years ago and obviously inconvenient. Furthermore, manufacturing products by machines instead of hands benefit individuals, for instance, declining workers’ labor intensities and minimizing the detrimental impacts from hazardous jobs. Last but not least, mechanization releases people from reproducing the same products repeatedly. Thus, people can pay more attention to productive and technological innovations rather than meaningless copying, which are regarded as the core power of progress in many successful companies like Apple, Microsoft and Google. Nevertheless, mechanized production has a great deal of merits, manual skills remain useful functions in some sectors in order to maintain the high and unique qualities. The salient example is the production of the Swiss watches. By way of conclusion, I reaffirm my position that mechanization is superior to handwork; however, reserving traditional handy technologies as human heritages is pretty wise as well. (7th September, 2011)

Has technological progress bring negative effects upon society in the last 100 years? Some people, including famous critics, believe that advanced technologies have brought detrimental impacts on the entire world in the past century. While the perspective they hold is valid, I personally disagree this perception and contend, with threefold sources, the overall effect of technological progress is positive, despite the negative aspects certainly exist. First of all, it is an indisputable fact that people’s lives have revolutionized by new technologies which are widely applied in many domains as to transport, trade and communication. Because of the innovations in techniques, we can connect with friends immediately by telephone or on the Internet and fly through the Pacific for some hours by airplane, which hardly can be imaged by the people who lived in hundreds years ago. Secondly and more importantly, though, technical promotions advantage to enrich the material needs and make hunger history around the world. With the development of techniques in agriculture as well as transport, the outputs of foodstuffs are increasing and these foodstuffs can be deliver to those areas where are suffering from floods or droughts. Last but not least, improving technologies not only benefit the materials but also profit the mental. For instance, the past 20 years have seen considerable changes in people’s spiritual lives due to the dramatic improvement of the Internet technologies. Nonetheless, we cannot ignore the harmful influences caused by technical progress, such as making people more lazy and losing the traditional techniques and skills. By way of conclusion, I restate my position that the merits brought by new technologies far outweigh the drawbacks. However, reducing the negative consequences to the limit is a more reasonable developing mould of technologies. (2nd September, 2011)