i) reducing cost / number of staff needed. ii) Reducing amount of hardware (printers) due to LAN networking. iii) Fun - games, Internet, music, graphics. iv) Communication. More ways to interact globally.
v) Education - access to info for research. vi) 3rd world - cheaper to provide laptops thean to send books over (OLPC, etc)..
Negative:
i) Hardcore porn industry (including child porn) ii) Hackers, ID fraud and spoof websites, iii) Virusses, spam and trojans. iv) Cyber-bullying and cyber-stalking.
v) People unable to interact 'in person'. vi) Online gambling. positive: computers help by saving time to do pretty much anything. tools are created to make things easier right? to save time. computers are tools. computers allow us to use the internet. you can focus on internet as well. no computers/no internet. and of course, internet also has a million ways it helps society such as helping people learn (people can read/research without having to spend time going to a library). that's a very broad question as there's tons of reasons. opens a new way of transportation (paperwork). communication (friends/family/business). saves space (filing).
negative: safety. (info can easily be hacked, most important for companies or agencies that have classified information such as the fbi/army etc. also, stalkers). inappropriate content for kids, society relies too much on computers sometimes, so when a computer goes out, they can't do anything. confusing for some of the older generation, and harder to get things done for them as some things can only be done on a computer now. some people never learn computers. gosh, there's so many