Every year, technological devices become faster, smaller, and smarter. Your cell phone holds more information than the room-sized computers that sent a man to the moon. In my essay Can Today's College Students Solve World Problems?, I talk about how advances like the green revolution and more fuel-efficient cars solved many of the problems that I worried about as college freshman in 1979. Yet these new solutions also cause new problems, like how the gasoline engine made travel faster and easier but also raised concerns about air pollution and global warming.
Below, you will find many questions, ideas, links, research, and videos to get you started on your research essay and ideas for how to write about technology from different perspectives, including:
- How to Write a Technology Research Paper
- General Topics (a list of questions to get you started)
- Reproduction (including egg and sperm donation and in vitro technologies)
- Our Bodies (including organ and animal transplants and innovations in surgery technologies)
- Human Cloning Topics (including genetic engineering)
- Identity (questions about how technologies influence our identities)
- Relationships (how texting, cell phones, and social media affect relationships)
Researching technology can involve looking at how it solves problems, creates new problems, and how interaction with technology has changed humankind.
Is Digital Reading Changing Our Brains?
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How to Research a Technology Paper
The technology research topics below are listed in categories and include hyperlinked articles to help you get you started. Many of the essays are used in popular college research essay textbooks like Perspectives on Argument (ed. Nancy Wood), which I use with my college students. However, because technology changes so quickly, I've also included links to articles in Discover Magazine which highlight interesting new innovations. Discover is a good place to start looking for topics since the magazine is written with authoritative scientific sources for the general reader. Here are the steps to start your research paper:
- Understand your Research Assignment: What kind of a research paper has your instructor assigned? Re-read your assignment sheet and any information in the textbook. For example, I ask my students to choose a technology topic for a Summary, Analysis, and Response essay which asks them to research three or more perspectives on an issue.
- Find a Topic Idea: Look over the six technology research topic list categories and scan the different arguable questions. For an Exploratory paper, you will need a topic which has three or more perspectives to explore. If you are doing a Position, Argument, or a Cause paper, you will need to know the different perspectives, but you will use your answer to the question as your thesis statement.
- Read about the Topic: Once you find one you like, you can learn more about that issue by looking at some of the hyperlinked articles. You can also look atGale Opposing Viewpoints (which is often available through your school library) to find articles that give you an overview on the issue.
- Choose a Question to Research: After you find a topic idea you like, write out the question and make a list of other similar issues or words you could use as keywords to research. You can use the other questions on the topic list to help you out.
- Use Your Keyword Ideas to Look for Articles: You can start by looking at Google to see what you will find, but don't use articles from Google that don't fit the type of authoritative sources your instructor requires. Use your library resources to find more academic articles.
Can Video Gaming Make a Better World?
Sample Topics
Here is a list of twenty starter topic ideas for research essays. See below for many more!
- What are the long-term effects of living in a technological world? Are these mostly negative or positive?
- Are children under 12 now growing up in a different world than college-age students did? How is it different, and what does that mean for them?
- What is the most important new technology for solving world problems?
- How has social media helped solve and create problems in countries outside the U.S.?
- Will governments like China continue to be able to control citizens' access to the Internet and social media?
- How do social media, texting, cell phones, and the Internet make the world bigger? Smaller?
- What are the implications of ever-increasing globalization through technology to the global economy?
- Technology is changing so quickly that we are frequently using computers, software programs, and other technologies that have frustrating glitches and problems. Is there a solution?
- How does our experience of social interactions with other humans influence the way we interact with machines?
- When does it become morally wrong to genetically engineer your child?
- What are new ways people can use technology to change the world?
- How is digital learning going to change schools and education?
- Does the Internet need controls or censorship? If so, what kind?
- Do digital tools make us more or less productive at work?
- To what extent is the development of new technologies having a negative effect?
- How will technology change our lives in twenty years?
- Should people get identity chips implanted under their skin?
- Should people in all countries have equal access to technological developments?
- Can video gaming really help solve world problems? (see video)
- How are brains different from computers? (see video)
- Is organic food really better for you than genetically modified foods?
- What are genetically modified food technologies able to do? How does this compare with traditional plant breeding methods?
- Should genetically modified food technologies be used to solve hunger issues?
- Since it is now possible to sequence human genes to find out about possible future heath risks, is that something everyone should have done? What are the advantages or disadvantages?
- If people have genetic testing, who has the right to that information? Should healthcare companies and employers have access to that information?
- If parents have genetic information about their children, when and how should they share it with the child?
- What sort of genetic information should parents seek about their children and how might this influence raising that child?
- Would having cars that drive themselves be a good or bad idea?
- How might travel in the future be different?
- Should information technologies and Internet availability make work from home the norm?
How Will Computers Change in Five Years?
Reproduction Essay Ideas
Egg and Sperm Donation Technology
- What is the importance of having a genetic connection to your children?
- Do egg donors and children have rights to a relationship?
- Should egg and sperm donors be compensated?
- What makes a person a mother or a father?
- What regulation should there be on the infertility technologies?
- Should health insurance plans cover infertility technologies?
In Vitro Transplant Technology
- Is surrogate pregnancy a good way for a couple to get a baby?
- Is it right that surrogacy is heavily advertised to military wives?
- What should the children’s rights be in a case of surrogate pregnancy?
- Should surrogates be used for any reason, or only for health reasons?
- Is it ethical for a woman to carry someone else’s child?
How Could Glass Technology Change Our Lives?
Topics About Our Bodies
Organ Transplants
The Beating Heart Donors (about organ transplant donors)
- When is a person dead? How do we define death? Should there be changes in our definition of “brain death"?
- Should organ donors be given pain medications?
- Should we choose organ donation for ourselves and our loved ones?
- Do organ donors feel pain?
Animal Transplants
- Is it ethical to use tissue from animals in people?
- Are using embryonic stem cells necessary, or will technological innovations make these obsolete?
- Should more funding grants from the National Institute of Health (which tend to support research projects without immediate practical applications) go to practical research projects which produce direct medical help to individuals?
- When considering war, should we factor in the medical costs of soldiers who will return wounded?
Surgery Innovations
The Bypass Cure (using bypass surgery to correct type 2 diabetes)
- Should bypass surgeries be used as a standard cure for type 2 diabetes?
- What is the cause of the recent increase in diabetes in the U.S.?
- How much of diabetes type 2 and obesity is genetic? How much is behavioral?
- Should people with obesity and diabetes or other diseases pay more for health care?
Surgery research topic: Should bypass surgery be used to cure diabetes? | Source
Human Cloning Topic Ideas
Genetic Engineering of Humans Research Links
- Genetically Engineering Babies with Three Parents (two short articles explaining this)
- Reverse Eugenics: Choosing an Embryo With a Disability
- Help Wanted: Adventurous Woman to Give Birth to a Neanderthal Baby
- Human Cloning: Is it a Viable Option (Human Genome Project fact sheet)
- Is human cloning a good or bad idea?
- Should we ban human cloning?
- What makes people human?
- What is the role of religion/faith in making decisions about using reproductive technologies?
- How does cloning change the value of human life?
Brains vs. Computers
Identity Research Topics
Perception of Self
Ways to Leave Your Body (out-of-body technology and brain science)
- What is the self? Can it be found in scientific investigation?
- Does science have the final say about who we are? Will technology create anInception effect where people will not be able to distinguish out-of-body from in-body experiences?
Brain Manipulation
The Switched On Brain (using light waves in the brain to cure psychiatric disease)
- Is controlling brains with technology like light ethical?
- How important is it to find alternative treatments (something other than drugs) for mental illness?
- What is the best way to treat mental illness?
- Has an increase in the use of technology affected the rise of mental illness in the U.S.?
- If it were possible, should technologies be used to control drug addictions?
- Should we seek ways to control the brain with technologies?
- What are the social dangers of brain-controlling technologies?
Medicine, Experiments, and Human Identity
- Should human life be deemed more important than animal life?
- What is dignity of human life and how should we observe this in medical situations?
- Who decides how far medical research should go?
- Should there be limits to scientific investigation on humans?
Source
Relationships Essay Topics
Texting and Cell Phones
When Texting is Wrong, by Randy Cohen in the New York Times.
- Should there be social rules about cell phone use in schools or the workplace?
- How are technologies changing the way people interact in the workplace?
- Have texting and social media damaged this generation's ability to communicate in person?
- Do cell phones and social media make family relationships stronger?
- How has texting changed the way we communicate with one another?
- What are the dangers of texting?
- When is texting rude? Has texting made this generation less respectful of other people? Who decides?
Social Media
They Loved Your G.P.A. and Then They Saw Your Tweets by Natasha Singer in the New York Times
- How should people manage their social networking profiles? How important is this?
- Should there be limits to the access a university or employer has to social profiles?
- Should teachers have limits on social networking with students?
- How should professionals use Facebook or other social media?
- Should there be more regulations on social media privacy?
- How large a role should social profiles have in hiring and other decisions?
- How justifiable is it to take legal action against someone for posts on social media sites?
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