Technology did more good than harm this decade

The dangers of tech are real. But so are the possibilities.

Here is how most people think technology works: You have a problem you need to solve or a task you need to accomplish, and then you use technology to do it. Technology, in other words, is a tool. In the era of social media and the smartphone, people had needs — to connect with others, to find out information, to entertain themselves — and tech provided a solution.

The trouble, we now know, is that in providing solutions to some problems, technology created a whole host of others. Having the world's information at your fingertips lets you slip into a bubble of your own reality; finding like-minded people across the globe can give hatred a home; and having a social feed with all sorts of people can lead to rancour and polarization.

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Navneet Alang

Navneet Alang is a technology and culture writer based out of Toronto. His work has appeared in The Atlantic, New Republic, Globe and Mail, and Hazlitt.