Research: The effect of computer in our daily life
Positive effects

1. Accessibility—the great ability to transmit information by the computer indicates that people are able to work in isolated areas. E.g. mountain top or polar region. They are able to get the information that they need from around the world, to trade with other companies from all the countries around the world. This increases the efficiency when we are doing work.
2. Family bounding—Due to the presence of the computer, people is able to work at home and they are able to spend more times with their families. This reinforces the family bonding. This will improve the standard of living of people psychologically.
3. Conveniency—it is very easy to search information through internet if we have a computer. We are even able to find information of a very specific topic in just one second. The online reference books and dictionaries displace the library. It is cheaper to read a book online that buying a book which is going to be old after one year. The information online is always renewed and up to date. This allows us to save times for other things. We can also save a lot of energy.
4. Communication with families and friends—we do not need to use the traditional way to send a letter to our family or friends anymore which needs two to three weeks to get the reply. We can just compose a letter online and send an e-mail to our loved ones for free and they will receive it immediately after we pressed the “send” button. We also can use the MSN of the other chatting features to communicate with our family members or even see their faces without thinking about paying bills. This provides us a good way to maintain our family bonding.
5. Usefulness to the business—companies are able to introduce their products through internet on the computer and promote them, hence sell their products and make profits.
6. Assistant the science research—the research department in varies universities and institutions of different countries are connected by the internet. They can exchange their experiences and findings through computers and they can cooperate online to do a science project together. This will lead to a faster development in our society.
7. Entertainment—Computers is now able to hold all the media such as music, videos and pictures or recorded TV. One of the examples is the YOU TUBE. The most recent music can be downloaded anytime we want and we are able to watch the TV programme that we like freely without a need to rush back home to watch them on time. We can pause anywhere we want. We can save large amount of money that we use to buy CD’s as we can download everything that we want from the internet. All these would help us to relax and refresh ourselves when we become stressed in this competitive society.
8. Organisation of data—some of the programs in the computer such as the Microsoft Word or Excel can help use to organize our overwhelming data into a very clear and explicit form. We are able to analyse our data and present them in the form of pie charts, bar charts or tables. Computer is able to draw the diagrams nicely in just one second which will spend us about ten minutes if we choose to draw by ourselves. We are able to plan our work and time orderly with the help of the computer.
9. Make our life in order— we are able to save thousands of phone numbers, e-mail addresses, home addresses and zip codes in our computer. We are able to set an alarm to remind ourselves some of the important meetings or appointments. This function of the computer helps us to do our work more efficiently and making fewer mistakes when we are doing works.
   
   DATA...

88% of online Americans say the Internet plays a role in their daily routines. The activities they identified as most significant are communicating with family and friends and finding a wealth of information at their fingertips.

64% of internet users say their daily routines and activities would be affected if they could no longer use the internet.

53% of Internet users say they do more of certain everyday activities simply because they can do them on the internet. The most popular are communication with family and friends and looking up information.

50% of internet users who ever look up phone numbers, addresses or zip codes their lives.

SO… All these static shows the importance of computer in our daily life. Some of us will be greatly affected if we do not have internet to help us.

Negative effects

1. Great loss financially—we sometimes need to spend large amount of money on the software that are used to clear the virus in our computer. New virus may attack our computer again although we have cleared the old one and we have to purchase another new software to get ride of the new virus. This kind of investment is endless. It is a great loss if the computer is successfully attacked by the virus and breakdown.
2. Addiction to computer – Some of the people will not be able to survive without the computers. As they work, chat, play with the computers everyday, they are not comfortable to live in the real world.
3. Disability in communication—When people work, play or chat with computer too much, their ability to act or interact with others will be degraded. Their speaking skill will become disabled.
4. False information – The information that provided online is not always true, these will give people a false idea on the things they are searching on.
5. Effect on children’s minds – Children are able to go online to see some healthy things such as pornography or violence. They will go and surf the net even though that they are told not to do so. Therefore, children are polluted with all the unhealthy information and these will lead to a lot of problems to themselves and society when they grow up.
6. People is deskilled—as computers are more and more involved in business, the skills that people need to possess decreases. Computers are able to more and more for us. For example, in industries, many jobs just require people to press the buttons to start machinery which is operated by computers. The calculator that we use also deskilled us as sometimes we even take time to get the answer for simple multiplication if we do not have a calculator around.
7. Harmful effect on environment—Computers also harm the environment in many ways. Firstly, it consumes huge amount of energy. It drains our natural resources. Secondly, there are a lot of poisons substances that make up a computer and these are not always disposed in the correct way. They end up in landfills.
8. Global warming – Computers also contribute to global warming by produce non bio- degradable waste.
9. Effect on people’s health—Computers also harm people’s health such as myopia. Moreover, many related diseases will appear if people always sit in front of the computer for days.