Can you remember before we had cell phones? Or can you remember how life was before the invention of the internet? Technology has advanced our society so greatly that it’s difficult to image life without. If you want to see how much you rely on technology try putting your cell phone down for an entire day. You will quickly see the extent to which we use, need and have to come to depend on technology in every aspect of our lives.
History
Things like fax machines and pagers are pretty much a thing of the past. Businesses seldom use don’t use these types of equipment anymore and they have been replaced with email and cell phones. If you think back to when pagers were popular you will also remember that pay phones were still around. When you would receive a page from someone you would have to stop and find a pay phone to call them back. Cell phones were introduced in the eighties but only the elite members of society had them due to their cost. Now, everyone has a cell phone and pay phones are ancient thing of the past. Cell phones are also responsible for the drop in American’s that have home phones. Cellular phones became so affordable that people got rid of homes phone and only use cell phones.
Email has also changed the way we communicate with each other, the way we do business and the way we receive our bills every month. Companies will often offer you a discount if you go paperless which means they will not send you a bill every month instead you are instructed to log into your account with them online to view and pay your bill. This almost devastated the United States Postal Service. Prior to email and the internet most business was conducted through the mail. You would receive your bill, write them a check and mail it back to them so when paperless billing was introduced the Postal Service lost billions.
Crime
Technology has helped us tremendously with solving crime. There are so many different ways, test and methods that crime labs can use now to help solve very serious crimes. In the past, rape victims would rarely see their attacker brought to justice because there just simply wasn’t enough DNA technology available for the investigators to use. However, now the crime lab only needs a small minute sample in order to come up with a complete DNA profile that tells investigators who the attacker is. And if criminals think that they can get away with murder then they better think again because the advancements in technology are no match for them. Let’s take it a step further. People once thought that they could hide behind their computers and commit crimes but when netflow was introduced on Cisco routers it brought all of that to a screeching halt. Net Flow is a feature that allows that router to capture IP network traffic. Just like humans have unique fingerprints, computers have their own unique IP address and authorities are now ab le to use that information to put a face to the computer. This technology is how they catch child pornography offenders.
Healthcare
The healthcare industry has also benefited from technology in major ways. There are several different types of full body scans available now that can catch cancer at its earliest stages. Simply put this could be a matter of life and death because we can have cancer for months and not even know it and by the time we find out it’s too late and death is the prognosis.