EMERSON Essay, Research Paper

?Society never advances. It recedes as fast on one side as it

gains on the other.? Although written long ago these words

by, Ralph Waldo Emerson still hold true today. Everyday in

society people are making improvements, however, but

these improvements also have equal drawbacks. Today we

are using cutting edge technology to improve every aspect of

our daily lives. For instance in today?s society the fields of

Communication and Medicine are constantly advancing yet

they both create significant losses. Technology has helped

increase the speed of communication and decrease its cost.

However, at the same time it has caused people to become

more impersonal with each other. In earlier times the major

form of communication was for people to visit each other

and go to public meeting places. One of the next major

advances was the telephone. Due to the telephone people

no longer went to the public meeting places as often as they

used to. As time goes on, new advances still allow people to

contact and communicate with each other more easily.

These advances such as faxes, beepers, and electronic mail,

although seemingly making life easier, each help to decrease

the earlier forms of communication. The field of medicine,

like the field communication, also displays what Emerson

was trying to say. This field too, which had many advances,

has also caused many difficulties. As scientists and doctors

try to come up with cures for the many diseases we have

today, they are also making new ones. For example, when

scientists went to Africa in search of a cure for a disease,

they came back with monkeys that were contaminated with

the Emboli virus. Today in Russia there are military bases

where Russian scientists are creating thousands of germs and

viruses to use in germ warfare. These germs and viruses are

capable of killing thousands of people instantly. As

technology continues to advance and society moves

?forward?, people continue to use the less personal forms of

communication, and create new problems in the field of

medicine. The fear of becoming a society, which

communicates only through machines, and creates new

disease, is becoming greater with time. For all of society

gains there are equal drawbacks. So as in Ralph Waldo

Emerson words ?society never advances.?