Impact of Technology

With the mainstreaming of many new technologies over the past 20 plus years the question has become whether this technology is an overall positive or negative. In many small towns across Ireland the question still doesn't have a decisive answer. While the positives are many (improved medical service time, transportation, information on the go) that now seem impossible to be without, there are also drawbacks (loss of tradition being the main one, more people leaving the countryside).

While these technologies are now commonplace to the larger cities of Ireland, rural communities are still living in a 1990s state of being. Internet in Irish rural communities is less than satisfactory and dial-up is still used in a near majority of the residencies there. This would be completely unacceptable here in America, and it goes to show the differences that rural communities still face in smaller European countries.

Cell phone use has mainly positives in the rural setting. With the ability to call out at anywhere at anytime it has made the agricultural world a much easier thing to manage. Product can be redistributed and redirected with a certain ease now that everyone is reachable and that eliminates miscommunication problems that have plagued the rural set for many decades.

Many people see technology as something that is either inherently good or inherently bad, and what most situations prove to us over and over is that technology is only as good or bad as the people who are using it. Rural Ireland has made great strides in everything from medical services to better work efficiency because of the inclusion of cell phones and the internet and that can only be seen as a very good thing.