Part 1: Science in Personal and Professional Life
The four technologies without which it would be difficult to get through the day or night are internet, refrigerator, online shopping, and online banking. However, these four technologies have some negative impacts on lives, society, and the environment. The adverse effects of the internet are a lack of privacy due to increasing interconnectedness that attracts cybercriminals. The internet exposes individuals to decreased security and safety. The internet further adversely affects social relationships because some friends may not keep up with technological changes (Mc Carthy et al., 2018). The society is negatively impacted by the easy availability of illegal and inappropriate materials that are not age-suitable, leading to societal vices such as crime and drug addiction. The internet promotes a culture of autonomy by activities such as addiction to social networks that disrupt people’s lives personally and professionally. The internet negatively affects the environment through the continual usage of internet that requires large data centers. These data centers are often large and inefficient, with massive servers taking a lot of geographical space and using lots of energy. The enormous power requirements to keep the centers running throughout, wastage of energy, and the large carbon footprint are all detrimental to environmental well-being.
Refrigerators are harmful to human health through food consumption kept for more than four days in the fridge. Such food has lost the necessary nutritional value and could additionally lead to poisoning. The regular inhalation of high concentrations of Freon (released into the atmosphere when a refrigerator is working) leads to health issues such as fluid buildup in the lungs and organ damage coupled with breathing difficulty (Mc Carthy et al., 2018). The refrigerator negatively affects society by increasing unhealthy eating habits and wasteful spending, thus putting pressure on limited global resources. Refrigeration is responsible for environmental degradation by depleting the ozone layer, increasing health risks, rising sea levels, and global warming.
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The demerits of online shopping to individuals include the lack of touch and feel of the merchandise, absence of interactivity, and no chance of closely examining the goods.
Moreover, there are cases of delays in delivery and fraud in online shopping environments (Mc Carthy et al., 2018). Society feels the weight of online shopping through increased online fraud activities since clients have to use their credit or debit cards when shopping online, making them vulnerable. The environment is adversely affected by e-commerce channels that lead to increased emissions due to the requirement for additional packaging, clients purchasing fewer items online, and multi-item orders requiring multiple deliveries.
Online banking poses a security risk through identity theft of individuals. The systems are not foolproof making users vulnerable to cyber-attacks and other criminal attacks. An individual has to continually monitor their accounts, be very careful with their phone and prepare for the worst when using online backing, making it a challenging endeavor. Online banking has led to societies that promote bad debts due to readily available mobile loans. Most of the society’s youth have become defaulters of such loans and taken on illegal means of making a living such as phishing, identity stealing, unethical hacking, and keylogging. Online banking affects the environment through the disposal of equipment used once they are considered obsolete. Most of these gadgets are non-biodegradable, making them hazardous to the environment (Mc Carthy et al., 2018).
Electricity is among the crucial discoveries that make modern life possible. Electricity has allowed the discovery and development of mobile phones, computers, television, and others across various disciplines (Michel, 2020). The discovery and understanding of electricity are beneficial as it opened the doors for transformation in technology. The discovery that the human brain and nervous systems communications are through action potentials, which are a form of electrical impulses, is an excellent example of such discoveries due to electricity availability.
The advantages of electricity and other discoveries it helped discover include its multiple uses and forms such as magnetic, heating, chemical, and electrical effects. Electricity makes lighting possible for people to work in places that would be otherwise dark and at night. Domestic appliances leverage the use of electricity to make human life comfortable. Similarly, factories use electricity to make essential products for sustaining human life. The versatility and ease of control of electricity make it advantageous to humanity. However, electricity has demerits such as air pollution and an increase in greenhouse gases emission, both of which are detrimental to all life. The merits of electricity far outweigh its disadvantages, and the existing disadvantages can be overcome by using alternative electricity generation such as solar, wind, geothermal, and biomass energy.
Part II: Science and technology in a multicultural world
Westernized high tech research approach to medical treatment is advantageous as it’s effective and fast. For example, an injured patient in an emergency room can be quickly and accurately diagnosed within hours, and a solution to their medical issues discovered fast. The advancement in westernized medical procedures and gadgets like the X-Rays and laboratories have enhanced the diagnosis or treatment of various health conditions and ailments. The treatments help alleviate the negative symptoms and enable the patients to resume normalcy quickly (Egorova et al., 2017). A demerit of the westernized medication is that sometimes it fails to address the root cause of the ailment or sickness. As a result, the medication treats the symptoms without resolving the underlying problems that could lead to complications in one’s life. For example, antidepressants can adversely damage one's lungs and kidneys, besides leading to drug abuse in the long-run. Additionally, some medications include scary and harsh interactions with culinary extracts and substances that lead to medical complications.
The traditional medicine as an approach to medical treatment is advantageous as it provides natural healing. The treatments often use naturally available products that have very minimal negative impacts on one’s health. The combination of the natural products or plants in the treatment of diseases, ailments, and health conditions helps the patient heal naturally without using artificial products that have been known to have some negative impacts on the internal organs like the lungs and the kidneys. A disadvantage of traditional medicine is the risk of purchasing fake herbs. Since traditional medicine does not have stringent laws and guidelines, patients or clients are exposed to the risk of buying counterfeit herbs or misdiagnosis from ignorant, misinformed, or fraudulent practitioners (Xing et al., 2020).
Multicultural approaches to medical treatment are beneficial because they will increase the knowledge base by integrating and harmonizing practitioners' knowledge, abilities, experience, and expertise from both sides. It is possible to improve medication by using traditional and westernized approaches and the two drawing upon each other. The projected outcome will be an increase in discoveries of other effective medical treatments. There should also be fewer errors due to both practitioners exchanging and evaluating their best practices to create the ideal practices that will benefit the final recipients of the medications (WHO, 2020).
The challenges in combining the two different cultural approaches to treatment include either practitioners disagreeing on their personal beliefs and practice rules. For instance, traditional practitioners could hold that they conduct a particular procedure in a certain way as they have always done it successfully. Conversely, westernized medication practitioners would disagree with scientific research and thus lead to a stalemate and perhaps the end of the integration. Another challenge could be the beliefs of nature that the traditional medicine practitioners hold, which could be against the existing scientific research (Xing et al., 2020). The integration requires healthy interactions with acceptable compromise from both parties to benefit from both practitioners' rich alliance. Multicultural approaches to medical treatment will be beneficial but will take time and the highest professional collaboration level for successful implementation.
References
Egorova, K. S., Gordeev, E. G., & Ananikov, V. P. (2017). Biological activity of ionic liquids and their application in pharmaceutics and medicine. Chemical Reviews, 117(10) , 7132-7189.https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.chemrev.6b00562.
Mc Carthy, U., Uysal, I., Badia-Melis, R., Mercier, S., O'Donnell, C., & Ktenioudaki, A. (2018). Global food security–issues, challenges, and technological solutions. Trends in Food Science & Technology, 77 , 11-20. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tifs.2018.05.002.
Michel, J. G. (2020). Could Machines Replace Human Scientists?: Digitalization and Scientific Discoveries. Artificial Intelligence , 361-370.https://doi.org/10.30965/9783957437488_023.
WHO. (, 2020). Traditional, complementary, and integrative medicine . Retrieved from World Health Organization: https://www.who.int/traditional-complementary-integrative-medicine/about/en/
Xing, Q., Ling Fu, Z. Y., & Zhou, X. (2020). Efficacy and Safety of Integrated Traditional Chinese Medicine and Western Medicine on the Treatment of Rheumatoid Arthritis: A Meta-Analysis. Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine , https://doi.org/10.1155/2020/4348709.
