Effects of Technology

Effects of Technology

Technology and the changes it brings can have a very big effect on our lives. I believe that the technological change which has had the largest impact on life in this country is the advent of the internal combustion engine. My reasoning for this is based on transportation and relative ease of travel enabled by the internal combustion engine.

Before the internal combustion engine, people generally stayed close to home; some never traveling farther than a few miles in their lives. They lived at or within walking distance of their work. The different modes of travel were walking, horseback, carriages, boats, and steam powered locomotives; which were slow and often required provisions to last the journey (except for the locomotives; but even then, if the station debarked from was not your final destination, one still had to resort to one of the other modes of travel). Journeys greater than a short distance could take days, weeks, or even months to complete.

The business of trading was severely restricted by time and distances. Fresh fruits and vegetables couldn't travel too far without spoiling, and meats had to be salted or smoked to preserve them for any length of time. Furthermore, crop sizes were limited by how much plowing, planting, and harvesting could