Technology has increased the standard of living of a section of people who have been exposed to the usage of the tech sources.
But on the other hand, technology has increased the divide between the haves and the have-nots. Know how of technology has helped people get jobs with heavy pay packets while the ones which are not involved in the technology have been left high and dry.
We will discuss here the effect of the technology sources on the lifestyle and habits of people and whether technology has elevated our standard of living or pushed us down the society hierarchy.
Be it housing, transportation or any means of communication etc, technology has affected us in all these aspects. It may be in the positive or the negative sense, but what I think, we will all broadly agree is that technology has affected the way we think of how our standard of living will be.
Modern Housing
The technology of building modern housing has been for aesthetics, comfort, safety, security, and a host of other positive benefits.
However, technology can bind us to a life style that depends on his element being in our lives. We now are not satisfied with a normal house with the basic amenities but demand much more in the form of luxurious amenities like clubhouse, etc.
Even if we can ill afford to maintain such a standard of living we tend to come under family and societal pressure to take up residence in such a luxurious complex. We become dependent on housing in the forms that are available to maintain our current standard of living even though the same is very difficult to maintain at the exorbitant rates.
Transportation
With many advances in technology, the world has become a small place. People don’t stop to think anymore about taking a flight to a country thousands of miles away.
Even the dependency on automobiles or trains is an example of how technology is affecting us. When the fuel prices rise, it affects our transportation costs, but due to our dependency we have no choice but to follow our daily regime.
To maintain our current standard of living, even though we can ill afford to take the automobile to work, we do the same.
Communication
To maintain our current lifestyles we require the normal media players like, the pagers, answering machines, mobiles, PDA etc which can help us organize our life and increase our performance and efficiency.
Today, every household has to have the basic amenities like an answering machine, two or three landline phones etc which might not be all that necessary for running the house but are very important to maintain the high society standards.
With the help of information technology, communication has also become cheaper, quicker, and more efficient. We can now communicate with anyone around the globe by simply text messaging them or sending them an email for an almost instantaneous response.
Media
Today every household also has the latest range of the television, and that too the latest plasma or flat LCD version, home theaters, stereos etc which will proclaim loudly the social status of the proud owner.
But just the gadgets do not ensure a higher standard of living, the branding also helps a lot i.e. if it belongs to an MNC brand, it adds stars to the source, whereas the same cannot be said for the one made and sold in the local market.
