<p>Assignment: Should we hold on to the old when innovations are available, or should we simply move forward? Plan and write an essay in which you develop your point of view on this issue. Support your position with reasoning and examples taken from your reading, studies, experience, or observations.</p>
<p>Although avoiding innovations may seem safe and risk-free, embracing the advancements of human’s work, ideas, and inventions can provide tremendous help to everyday life and career opportunities. Various examples in my experience have bolstered this stance, particularly the times when my mother found her long-lost friends and a new job on Facebook.</p>
<p>The time when my mother regained a precious friendship in 2009 illustrates clearly how embracing innovations can benefit our everyday life. Facebook, Incl. is a social network used by millions of people that has consistenly reunite old friends, separated families, … despite geographical boundaries and long time of disconnection. Thanks to its “People You May Know” tool that suggests possible acquaintances by analyzing a multitude of information such as alma mater, clubs, mutual friends…, my mother found her two best friends who, pressured by the Vietnam War, had to migrate to the United States in 1975. This discovery, undoubtedly, enriched my mother’s emotional life, which is reflected in her jubilant countenance and her constant laughing over the Internet while using Skype with her friends.</p>
<p>Like how it helped her find her old friends, Facebook also expanded my mother’s circles of new friends, creating more network and career opportunities. In 2011, she joined an online group for haiku enthusiasts simply for the sake of meeting people who shared the same interest. Through conversations and meetups of the group, she learned that there were a couple of business managers who happened to like her poems, herself, and whose company also happened to have a job vacancy that required an employee exactly like her. Seeing how compatible my mother is with her manager aka her fellow clubmate, and how the job fitted her, they decided that this was a perfect match that could hardly be found by using traditional recruitment methods. Once again, my mother benefited from embracing innovations.</p>
<p>My father, in contrast, is very wary of innovations. He prefers a traditional lifestyle that includes working, coming home and watching TV, and avoids computers and the Internet. It is difficult to say who is happier, he or my mother, but most people would agree that my mother is the one who gets more share of thrilling moments.</p>
<p>There is nothing wrong with taking a hesitant approach toward innovations: after all, scientists have died while conducting experiments, airplanes have crashed on trial flights. However, if people are too scared to embrace new ideas and inventions, human development will be stagnant. Embracing innovations pushes humankind forward, and therefore is a risk worth taking.</p>
<p>-- I also wonder whether I should space between paragraphs like this. It is easier to read but could be seen ask trying to make a sign?</p>