"What we criticize in others, we deny in ourselves."
Powerful

"This approach could be totally wrong, but it's a hypothesis worth disproving."

Yesss! Yesss. Exactly!!!

Some believe that life today is too complex due to technology, and that people need to return to old ways of living with no technology to cope with this. To me, this sounds both misled and improbable.

It is true that at a single glance around, a time-traveler from the medieval past would be intimidated by all the gadgets and modern technology. Everything now looks so complicated. Take computers, or household appliances. They are increasingly more sophisticated, and how to use them is not very intuitive. However, all these mentioned pieces of technology are actually there to simplify life, granted it takes a little bit of getting used to before a person can take advantage of them. To illustrate, washing machines and dish-washers save tremendous amounts of time and trouble in housekeeping; meanwhile computers and smartphones improve efficiency and productivity at work or while studying. Basically, nearly all technology has been invented to make a certain aspect of life easier for humans.

As for living without technology, it would be largely improbable nowadays. One needs to struggle quite a bit to think of a domain of life that is unaffected by some form of technology. A perceived luddite or technology-hating person would still need to pay for things. Unfortunately for them, the society is turning progressively cashless, with online payment taking all over. How about communicating with their friends and others? Even if they were to abandon phones, they would still need a car to travel to their relatives’ or friends’ places. Even at workplaces, people communicate via email. The internet is another piece of technology that’s become an inseparable part of life. So it follows then that “a simpler” life these days would look a lot like that of a caveman.

In conclusion, I do not agree at all that technology has made our lives more difficult. People who think that should just take the trouble to learn how to use modern technology, and enjoy its immense potential.

Some people think that technology has made our lives too complex and the solution is to lead a simpler life without technology.
To what extent do you agree or disagree?

The table gives information about annual milk production rates of four countries in the years 1990, 2000, and 2010. Overall, it is clear that the Netherlands and Australia were considerably bigger producers of milk compared to Tanzania and Guatemala. As for changes, the Netherlands’ rate kept stable over the years, while that of Australia decreased every decade and Tanzania and Guatemala showed significant increases.

In 1990, the Netherlands and Australia produced almost the same amount of milk at 11,262,000 and 11,246,000 liters respectively. However, the Netherlands maintained this level throughout the period, with a peak of 11,466,000 liters in 2010, while Australian milk production shrank to over 9 mln liters by the final year.

By contrast, Tanzania and Guatemala both had a fraction of the top two countries’ numbers. In 1990, for example, Tanzania produced 87,000 liters of milk as opposed to 26,000 liters produced in Guatemala. Over the next 20 years, this gap between the countries remained more or less the same as both scaled up their milk production at a similar rate, reaching 155,000 and 84,000 liters respectively.