Technology can be a blessing or a curse, depending on how it is used. Discuss the positive and negative ways that technology is affecting human lives and the environment. Explain how the same nuclear materials (uranium, plutonium, etc.) and technology used for generating electricity for commercial applications is also used for making nuclear weapons. What are the harmful effects of nuclear weapons? In your opinion, what other form of technology can be similarly misused? How important is it to make sure that technology is not misused? What are the ethical issues related to the use of technology?

The answers are given below

Explanation:

Q1. Discuss the positive and negative ways that technology is affecting human lives and the environment.

Positive impacts of technology on human lives:

i. Increase learning: Technology increase the desire to learn as information to aid learning is easy to find now compared to when technology was not around.

ii. Made learning easier.

iii. Made information easily accessible. For example, with the invention of the internet.

iv. Made communication easier.

v. Made transportation faster.

vi. The health world also benefitted, as vaccines production becomes improved, devices are built to assist handicaps, machines are developed for exercise, more equipment is built to make x-ray, scans easier.

Positive impacts of technology on the environment

i. With the improved technology on fingerprints detection, technology has found a way of curbing crime.

ii. Technology has made it possible to get other means of generating electricity. For example, solar, wind.

iii. Technology also improved agriculture.

Negative impacts of technology on human lives:

i. Increase cyber crimes and aid people in losing money to criminals who use technology to hack accounts.

ii. Increase children getting access to contents that are not healthy for them. For example, some children might get access to information not good for them on the internet.

Negative impacts of technology on the environment:

i. Increase in health hazards.

ii. Increase in the pollution of the environment.

iii. Could be threats to lives. For instance with nuclear weapons, terrorists could use it to wreak havoc.

Q 2. Explain how the same nuclear materials (uranium, plutonium, etc.) and technology used for generating electricity for commercial applications are also used for making nuclear weapons.

Electricity can be generated when Uranium-235 which is naturally occurring can generate heat when split which in turn produces steam that is capable of powering a generator.

Plutonium-239 is man-made it can be used to make a nuclear weapon likewise Uranium-235. A nuclear weapon can be made When the atomic nuclei of Uranium-235 split into two or more smaller atoms.

Q 3. What are the harmful effects of nuclear weapons?

1. Has a long term effect on human health.

2. It can cause an immediate effect on hearing, injuries to those close to the site of the blast.

3. Affects the soil where it was dropped there by affecting agriculture.

Q 4. In your opinion, what other forms of technology can be similarly misused?

1. Internet use

2. Other smaller weapons like guns, can also be used to perpetrate crimes.

Q. 5 How important is it to make sure that technology is not misused?

1. To save lives.

2. To protect the environment.

3. Not to endanger the economy.

4. To protect privacy.

5. To allow humans to live peacefully.

Q. 6.  What are the ethical issues related to the use of technology?

1.  Piracy

2. privacy

3, moral behavior

4. Knowledge