electronics aiding humanity

Electronics Aiding Humanity

Technology and Man

The emergence of technology brought a lot of changes in how man performs his daily activities, may it be for his personal needs or for his professional responsibilities. How technology continuously provides interface to a faster accomplishment of man's needs is important to the awareness of mankind.

Since the time that diverse and advanced technologies were introduced, man was empowered to do things that were never imagined before. Such includes the completion of tasks in a quicker amount of time as compared to how they can be completed if done in a traditional process. For instance, banking was made easier and more convenient when automated teller machines (ATMs) were developed.

Instead of falling in line in banks that are only located in specific branches, people can now do most of their banking transactions in ATMs that are widely accessible in many places within an area. This was made possible by the state-of-the-art facilities that technology such as computers and other developments particularly in electronics are able to create.

Among the wonderful benefits that people gained from the birth of diverse technologies along with different kinds of futuristic electronics is its ability not only to provide assistance to those who are capable of manipulating them but also to assist those who have deformities both mentally and physically. In short, technology and electronics continues on aiding humanity. The different breakthroughs and area of research and development persists on developing disciplines for biomedical engineering that continuously advances the living conditions of humanity.

There are many aspects in life where we can see how the technology of electronics brings "life" to our lives. This paper will aim to discuss the different ways that the technology of electronics plays in our society, especially to the disabled individuals who are able to survive the different challenges around their environment with the help of advanced electronics. Also, this paper will discuss how electronics take part in their development as human beings despite of their disabilities and how they live their lives and become productive resources to society.

The Importance of Electronics in Today's Society and How Mankind Relies on the Current Technologies

The rapid changes in today's technology have definite effect to every individual especially to those with physical and mental defects. Since the birth of computer technology, it changed the basic meaning of the term "electronics." If before "electronics" would mean something that works because of electricity, the term "electronics" these days means further than this. "Electronics" of today is something that betters our way of living. It is something that everyone would choose over the traditional and conventional methods of doing things. One common example of electronics that has changed the lives of everyone in the world is the computer.

The technology of electronics has significant effects in aiding the disabled individuals as well as the whole mankind. There are many researches and studies, as well as literatures, that proves the importance of electronics and everything that concerns technology. Making these advancements available to humanity became our means of living in what we call the "futuristic world."

One of the important uses of the technology of electronics in today's society is its capability to assist the visually impaired individuals. According to John M. Taylor (2004), from his study Serving Blind Readers in a Digital Age, there are more or less 2 million Americans who are visually impaired and causes them the inability to properly read standard forms of prints. However, with the help of electronics, such as computing that brings advance forms of communication, provides such visually impaired people with convenient access to information. One form of computing that does this is the VoIP (Voice-Over Internet Protocol), as well as the electronic devices that provides voice recognition and voice recordings. Suzanne Robitaille has the following example of how such assistive technology shows the importance of electronics to impaired individuals.

Don Barrett's phone is his best assistant at work. Barrett, who's blind, has a phone that uses spoken voice to let him know who the caller is or to read to him the messages people leave when he misses a call. He can even use voice commands to tell his phone to find a number in his electronic Rolodex.

None of these tasks are possible with a traditional phone, but Barrett is ahead of the game. He's using a PC-based phone that runs on voice-over-Internet-protocol (VoIP) technology. With some extra software, he can also hear his e-mail and voice mail from the Internet.

Even for the non-impaired individuals, we can say that the entire humanity is being aided by the advanced technology in electronics. Why did I say this? Just think of how almost everyone in the workforce as well as most individuals uses computers and printers as mediums of information. One direct proof to you is that this paper was largely made possible with the help of a computer, an example of advanced electronics and technology. Or perhaps, think of how one can survive in this age without having to use the different kinds of electronic devices that provide us with convenience in performing our tasks.

Although the technology of electronics is widely used in dissemination of information particularly to many businesses and industries, there are many applications of electronics where we can see much of its importance to peoples' lives. Leading in this importance is in the area of biomedical engineering discipline as well as in the treatment of individuals with mental and physical disabilities.

Advances in biomedical engineering discipline have made the impossible "possible." Since advanced technologies were applied in electronics, there have been a great number of electronic devices that assist in the maintenance and improvement of better health, as well as in the treatment of many diseases. Moreover, advanced electronics provide diverse mediums in the biomedics of treating mentally and physically impaired persons. With the help of technology and electronics, the discipline of medicine has advanced in a way that the current capabilities in today's medicine can never be achieved during the time that technology and electronics have not yet been developed and improved.

Technical Achievements in the Area of Biomedics

Far from what has been perceived about the improvements and the future of biomedics, today's discipline of medicine is achieving a lot of medical success because of the advances in electronics. According to City University of London Online,

With increasingly sophisticated equipment and medical procedures, healthcare is one of the areas where technology is having a dramatic impact on people's lives. Biomedical engineers work closely with doctors, nurses and other healthcare workers, installing, maintaining and offering support in the use of a range of computing, instrumentation, imaging and telemedicine equipment. As more and more new technologies are implemented in the diagnosis, treatment and management of hospital patients, there is an increased demand for highly skilled biomedical engineers.

Devices that implements advances such as optics and lasers allow the completion of medical processes with higher possibility of success. For instance, in the previous ages where there are no lasers yet, the surgery process in treating eye disorders requires diverse methods and procedures that are done manually, not to forget the amount of time needed from the procedure of preparing an eye for surgery up to the healing process. However, in the advent of laser surgery, the process of treating eye defects these days only requires a few hours. This was made possible because of the advanced capability of laser surgery to effectively and quickly treat physical defects.

Other visible significance of the technology in electronics these days is the advanced process of diagnosing diseases. There have been quite a number of diagnosis machines that have been developed for specific uses. For instance, x-rays these days have improved into having the capability of looking through any part of a human body. Another example is the ultrasound machines. If before, some medical instruments need to be placed inside the body of a woman to be able to know the gender or condition of a fetus, the process of acquiring such information these days is much different and more convenient for both the practice of medicine and to the patients. With the help of an electronic viewing monitor and an instrument similar to an x-ray that is being passed through the external body of woman, the baby inside the womb can instantly be seen.

Another example of the achievements that semiconductors, technology, and electronics have achieved is the ability of a human to have an artificial heart support. This breakthrough was just recently applied by medicine to several human patients and has been considered a success in the practice of medicine assisted by electronics and technology.

The capabilities and advances that the technology in electronics has demonstrated to mankind is indeed amazing. As many people believe and trust in both technology and electronics in the area of treating defects in the human body, the developments in electronics and technological endeavors that aims to provide humanity with the chance to live longer and beat the shortcomings of our physical body, as well as to surpass the challenges that it causes, will continuously have one single goal - that is, to discover the unknown and provide the good results to mankind.

The truth that electronics aid humanity may be a subject for debate. However, it must be noted that nothing else may beat your doubt on electronics but the fact that we can derive from others' experiences that the technological advances in electronics really assist man in sustaining his life and surviving from the weaknesses of our physical body. More so, we may derive such information from our relatives and friends who may have experienced recovering from diseases with the aid of advanced biomedic machines. or, you can also ask this question to yourself to provide a view on how effective do you really believe can technology that is applied in electronics help, assist, and aid humanity -- "Would you rather go for the old method and practices of medicine than how medicine is practice these days?"

Technology in Electronics - Aiding Other Defects of Humanity

If the advances in electronics lead the physical body to a longer life, there is another significant advantage that technology and electronics provide. This is especially apparent and true to those who are not considered terminally-ill physically but may be psychologically and mentally ill for the rest of their lives.

The diverse technologies applied in electronics provide assistance to different disabilities of many people. Perhaps, one of the most common areas where advanced electronics play a critical role is in the learning environment for disabled/impaired individuals. There have been a great number of learning machines that allow impaired individuals to manage the process of gaining knowledge and skills. Though such individuals may need to undergo longer amount of time to achieve the goal of learning, electronic machines such as computers help in a way that they provide more convenient delivery of the learning process. Thus, reducing the barriers that may have hindered disabled individuals to carry on a "normal" life. According to an article written by Juan Gutierrez, technology is a means for empowering disabled children. Further, from an article written by Anna-Liisa Salminen, on the importance of a computer augmented communication (CAC), Salminen and her colleagues suggest that the CAC devices became important tools for school work and leisure activities. The children and youngsters themselves perceived these additional facilities of the devices as meaningful as, or even most important than those for communication. Even if they were critical and disappointed with the CAC devices, they still saw the value of them and most of children wanted to keep going despite of the effort required.

The electronic form of learning, or what people presently calls "e-learning" has evolved in different methods, all of which allows assisted programs to users in which the speed of teaching can be adjusted to the speed of learning of the learner. This characteristic of e-learning is found to be the most common feature of assisted programs and utilities because their basic and general objective is to provide convenient learning especially to individuals with physical and mental impairments. Such electronic learning programs, especially those that were developed for impaired individuals, are designed specifically to provide the same opportunities to the disabled. According to Salminen and her colleagues,

Children with severe physical disability and speech impairment, such as those with cerebral palsy, usually understand other people's speech well, but are unable to express themselves through spoken language because they have difficulty in controlling their speech organs in order to articulate the sounds intelligibly. They may also have a language disfunction.

In such problem mentioned, there are many electronic devices that are available to those with impairments. Some examples are computer learning programs such as softwares for speech improvement, as well as electronic devices that provide treatment and therapy to physical disabilities such as specialized exercise-machines for physically disabled individuals. If the Braille was developed for the blind, wherein blind persons use their sense of touch to read information from brailles that are similar to ordinary books except that the text are designed as special symbols that are raised on paper to allow "touch of information" for the visually impaired, there now exists a more advanced form that was made possible by technology and electronics. One example was indicated by Juan Gutierrez in his article Technology Empowers Disabled Students.