Should There Be Limits On Technological Advancements?

Technological research and innovation is advancing our society at an incredibly rapid pace. However, while it holds many benefits, it also raises social and ethical questions the more our society depends on it. Ray Kurzwell (2005) focuses on the idea of the Singularity. The Singularity is the idea that technology will continue expanding to the point where human life will be completely transformed. This leads to the question, should there be limits on technological advancements? Although issues could arise with constant technological development, I believe that research should be limited only when an issue arises and ethics are questioned.
There has never been a period where humans stopped trying to better ourselves. By applying a restriction
It is important that we fully understand the effects new technological advancements have on society before we determine restrictions.
Technology and social media have affected society in many ways that were previously not imagined. For example, early innovators didn’t believe in computers becoming a widespread device. It was originally thought of to be a product strictly for men and science fiction geeks. Now a day, it is almost impossible to find someone without one. It has become an addiction that we never once believed it could be.
Our law and ethical practices continually evolve alongside our culture. Therefore, it is almost impossible to know whether the restrictions we place right now will be relevant 30 years from now. Especially with technology, our society has had to modify previous regulations to fit with our new culture (Wadhwa 2014). Freedom of speech is now a controversial topic considering we all have the ability to express whatever we want on a public platform in a way never done so before. In addition, people are now redefining our definition of privacy and surveillance due to the technology we use. We are constantly editing our constitution due to the creation of technology. At the rate technology is advancing, our biggest issue is that everything is expanding at
As long as we are not performing universal immoral actions, we should be allowed to try. Our society is currently going in the direction of innovation and creativity. We are learning more and more each day. With limitations, we won’t be able to continue this process. We would be stuck with what we already have rather than figure new methods to deal with issues. Creating limitations would assume that we know everything and we can plan for everything, but we can’t. While many are worried that technological advancements may eliminate what makes us human, Kurzwell believes “our civilization will remain human – indeed, in many ways it will be more exemplary of what we regard as human than it is today, although our understanding of the term will move beyond its biological origins.”
In a sense, we could argue that we are always in the process of the Singularity. Our lives are currently vastly different from just a couple decades ago. Due to technology, older generations have already lived through some of the biggest societal transformations in history. If we were to have originally created limitations on technological advancements, who knows how society would be operating now. As long as we keep on top of it, I believe that research should remain unrestricted until there is a reason to create a