Science is a threat to humanity. What are your views?

We live in a paranoid world today. In Hollywood movies, we see sinister robots taking over the world. In classical literature, we see hideous monsters, constructed from the flesh of the dead, ravaging the earth. In video games, we see an apocalypse, left behind after nuclear winter. Ultimately, the power of science and technology poses a significant threat to humankind – both physically and emotionally.

However, it is indeed hard to reject the benefits which science has enlightened humans with. Since the discovery of farming in the Neolithic age, innumerable progresses in science and technology has advanced the way humans obtain food. In the past, humans used shovels and hoes to manually till a small plot of land. Today, humans drive large tractors, farming hundreds of acres of farmland in a day. This momentous development in agriculture, dubbed the ‘Green Revolution’, has allowed us to feed a global population of 6 billion people – an impossible task if not for science and technology. Apart from physical comforts which science has offered humans, science has also offered humans much emotional comfort. Undersea broadband cables has allowed for ubiquitous internet access, which in turn has aided the rise of social media platforms – such as Facebook and Twitter. Such social media platforms have effectively shrunk the world, by allowing for transcontinental communication – instantaneously. What are its implications? It allows for people to converse with overseas friends without much effort. No longer do pen pals have to spend time and effort finding stamps or locating a mailbox. As a result, people can now maintain friendships easily, ‘at the click of the button’, as the cliché would have it.

Despite this, science, especially with its perverseness in today’s world, wields a significant threat to humanity. While, admittedly, the dystopian futures painted in sci-fi movies about an android-takeover of Earth are rather extreme, it is unmistakable that technology’s impact on mankind has sometimes been insidious and harmful. After the Industrial Revolution, robots and machines were invented and manufactured on a large scale. The introduction of machines to factories has resulted in the displacement of thousands of factory workers, as the jobs of workers were increasingly being replaced by machines. This problem is especially acute in the manual labour industry, where the jobs of humans are easily replaced by machines who will accept no pay and work long hours in dangerous conditions. As technology progresses, and more sophisticated forms of machines are created, who knows which jobs will be next to be rendered obsolete by robots. Already, advanced software is being harnessed to replace the job of teachers, by marking the essays of students.

Additionally, the employment of science and technology has led to severe damage to our environment. Today we face a global crisis – global warming, which threatens to bring humanity to its knees with freak weather and dramatic floods. This crisis was brought upon ourselves by the large emission of carbon dioxide, caused by the proliferation of cars and factories – a scientific invention once hailed as revolutionary. Moreover, science and technology generates a demand for natural resources, which has led to the destruction of our environment. In search for resources, mankind has plundered the world mindlessly and unsustainably, often leading to irreversible environmental damage or a resource shortage crisis in the future. During the Industrial Revolution, the European nations needed large amounts of natural resources such as rubber and tin to fund their sudden spike in production. As a result, they looked towards weaker African nations, which had large untapped reserves of natural resources. This started the era of New Imperialism, during which many Africans died resisting foreign invasion. More importantly, New Imperialism left lasting rifts and tensions between African tribes, which eventually culminated in armed conflict around Africa, mostly notably, the Rwandan Genocide. Evidently, humans, in their search to advance science and technology, has gone to extreme lengths, sometimes even harming themselves.

Ultimately, science and technology is very much like a double-edge sword – it can help us to cut down problems such as famine and disease which plague mankind. However, as gleaned from history, the temptation to raise the sword too high – to go too far to advance science – always exists, and this has often led to dire consequences.