EH 1020 English Composition II – VI Assignment

Introduction 

The project explores the state of mental health in first responders who include paramedics, firefighters and the police that are often exposed to traumatic experiences in their line of duty. These officers are luckier compared to their subjects because they have immediate access to a wide variety of mental health care services at their disposal to help them through the ordeals. However, these first responders in most cases shun away from seeking the health care services to help them deal with their ordeals for fear of stigmatization. These fears can be attributed to such factors as discrimination that comes with the admittance of a mental situation, especially from the public that looks up to the first responders. The society looks up to these personnel to help them in the time of distress, calamities, and accidents so much that they fail to acknowledge how the situations might be impacting the first responders. The first responders are expected by the society to swallow it strongly as professionals due to the numerous, and often vigorous pieces of training they receive to prepare them for such scenarios. The community needs to realize that these responders are also human with feelings and are bound to be affected at some point by the situations, no matter their professionalism. Recognizing this will play a significant role in humanizing the professionals, which in turn will make it easy for them to come out and address the mental challenges they go through. However, achieving this stand may not be an easy feat, especially by the responders who would want to continue maintaining their professionalism and the high regard they are held with. Proper mental health care services and mental health awareness among the first responders should be conducted within the society to encourage the accommodation of the first responders. 

Body Paragraphs 

For the authors that support the role of technology in bettering the society, they cite such factors as technology improving the social, political and economic spheres of the community. They argue that technology has played a leading role in bringing social change in the world as far as organizational structures and communication are concerned. Technology is reported to have changed the way the world operates concerning social, economic and political progress if the observations of Anderson and Rainie (2018) are anything to go by. In their article, these two authors build on a study that was conducted to explore the effects, both positive and negative, of technology. The study reports that technology to a great extent provides holistic benefits to humanity. The article plays a leading role in drawing the line between the benefits and the cost of technology in the sense that it reports a 47% vote for technology and a 32% vote against technology which views technology as a threat (Anderson & Rainie, 2018) . However, this claim is not without opposition. 

The other side of the debate argues that technology has destroyed intimacy, and is a threat to human life considering the recent forging of nuclear weapons that are believed to be awaiting their use. Contemporarily speaking, the opposing side points out to the fact that technology slows down development due to reduced innovation that is critical for economic progress. Bunn, Malin, Roth, and Tobey (2016) cite the contributions of technology in creating social unrest. These authors examine the role, technology as a threat, plays in ending humanity. They point out, quite effectively to the consequences of nuclear weapon usage with the current technological connectivity of mobile phones, the internet, the exposure to radio waves that only serve to make the matters much worse (Bunn, Malin, Roth, & Tobey, 2016) . With the increased exposure to these factors, the authors fear that survivors of nuclear war would have ravaging effects of radiation to contend with on top of health complications. These claims may be true, but the discussion on the benefits of technology is far from over. 

In exploring the benefits of technology, some authors argue that technology has increased the level of individual connectivity to a much higher level that has never been experienced before. Castells (2014) suggests that technology has changed the way humanity connects with history in the sense that they are now able to learn, share and discuss historical occurrences. The article is quite effective in pointing out the role technology plays in allowing memories and archival information retrieval. It has become easy and time-saving now than it was decades ago to access information about a particular subject or topic that happened years ago, for instance, the political history of a country since such information is stored on servers that ensure their security and authenticity. Additionally, technology has had a leading role in facilitating global trade (Castells, 2014) as the author points towards the role technology plays in relating information through the world thus facilitating the growth of social and personal services to create a vast market for buyers and sellers on the global market. According to this line of argument, technology has reduced the world to a global village in which any piece of information can be accessed from any given location in the world, hence easing long-distance communication. Yet even with all these positive attributes to the invention of technology, the society cannot overlook the moral decay it has had on the community. 

Labor replacement with technology threatens to rid people of their jobs, hence their source of livelihood. Frey and Osbone (2015) compare technology to entrepreneurship and points out, somewhat regrettably, that over time technology will rid humanity of their innovative skills for job creation and instead rely on technology to better the quality of the output of the existing jobs. While rooting for entrepreneurship, the authors argue that innovation is necessary for the continued wealth creation leading to economic progress. The article does a great job in giving the reader practical insight into the factor in question in the sense that the author points at a much slower rate of innovation being experienced over the last few decades since the invasion of technology. This slow rate of innovation implies that apart from jobs disappearing; there is a widening wealth gap caused by decreased innovation (Frey & Osborne, 2015) . This happens when the wealthy rely on technology to improve the quality of their productions while overlooking the needs to hire human labor. 

Conclusion 

In summary, this debate may be far from over, and as such, this paper does not wish to make a clear stand on the role of technology in the society but instead relies on authentic pieces of literature to bring to light the various points of argument taken in this topic. However, as the article earlier mentioned, while technology may have played a significant part in easing life in society, it has equally had its fair share of criticism for its shortcomings. The article has been quite effective in addressing this scope of fear as far the exposure to radioactivity is concerned. The role of technology and its effects on the society may be a debate that does not promise a clear stand anytime soon, but it is important to note that technology has played a significant role in redefining the society. It has led to the increased flow of information and provided solutions in areas that had hitherto been difficult to be tackled through the conventional means, just as much as it has brought and advanced the end of humanity by depriving people of their source of livelihood and promoted a moral decay. But either way, it is essential to understand both sides of the debate to be able to make a better judgment on how to use technology in the future. 

References 

Anderson, J., & Rainie, L. (2018). The future of well-being in a tech-saturated world. Pew Research Center . 

Bunn, M. G., Malin, M. B., Roth, N. J., & Tobey, W. H. (2016). Preventing nuclear terrorism: Continuous improvement or dangerous decline? 

Castells, M. (2014). The impact of the internet on society: a global perspective. F. González, ed , 132-133. 

Frey, C. B., & Osborne, M. (2015). Technology at work: The future of innovation and employment . Citi GPS.