“The face of our world is forever being molded by the blessings of technology.” -Steven Moxley
Has technology brought about more good or evil. Has it truly made our lives easier?
I think technology has made life easier for the rich but HARDER for poor,think of how many people have lost jobs when the ‘internet’ was invented…
Our use of technology dates to the broken tree branch first wielded by a Hominid to knock down a piece of fruit growing just out of his reach, or to knock in the head of his opponent. Or it might have been the use of a stone to crack the shell of a nut, or again, to crack the head of an antagonist.
It doesn’t take Stealth bombers to produce death on a massive scale. In 216 B.C., fifty thousand Roman Legionnaires were slaughtered by Hannibal’s army at Cannae, in Southern Italy. The Romans were mostly hacked to death with short swords. Later, in A.D. 1994, it took only 100 days to hack 500,000 to 800,000 Rwandan Tutsis to death using machetes. It’s been reported that some victims paid their attackers to shoot them rather than kill them with a machete. The going rate was said to be around 32 US dollars.
Not far from my house is an abandoned and overgrown farmstead. It was there on one of my walks that I came across a tiny family cemetery. It contains the headstones of two sisters: Emma and Mary. On each headstone is carved a small hand clutching a rose. It’s terribly touching. Emma was 9, and Mary 11 when they died within a few days of each other in August of 1864. I looked out at the overgrown Vermont field where I supposed they must have once played. Then, idiot that I am I sat down and cried.
But the question bothered me how these girls might have died so close to each other in the middle of the summer? So, a few weeks later I paid a visit to the town clerk’s office to try and find their names in the “Birth and Death” archive. I eventually found their names, I ran my finger over the dried black ink. To the right of their names was the single word, “diphtheria,” a word I was only vaguely familiar with. But I happened to notice that same word a bit further down the page. That word seemed to be everywhere. One family alone lost five children to diphtheria that summer. It didn’t seem possible that so many children could die in my town, whose population is 600 today and just over twice that number in the 19th century. Diphtheria is an infection of the respiratory tract caused by a bacterium known as Corynebacterium diphtheriae. Death from this disease usually comes from suffocation, paralysis and heart failure. Dear girls…
With or without technology, there’s no limit to how much evil men could do, but without technology there is a limit to how much good men could do. Men would kill each other with or without technology, but only technology could have saved the life of Emma and Mary.
Michael
Technology has made life easier but it has also removed our attention from the reason why we have technology. Beside the function of technology as a tool it has got a new meaning. If you remove all technology from a human being he/she have lost more then a tool; you may have removed the very meaning to live.
We relate to the technology around us as if it is a part of our life; and our life become artificial. What is wrong with this you may ask? It’s not wrong as long as it does not hurt our harmony; make us sick and the world sick. Once again we must listen to the nature to find the balance. It’s only the nature that judge our use of technology; if it harmonize it’s good, if not it’s bad.
That is true, but I don’t think the technology should be blamed for this. How can something that helps us with our work be bad? If humans stand together as a collective this would not happen. I believe that the true human nature is not that we should defeat each other, but to cooperate, everything else is a misunderstanding. We are indoctrinated by studying the behavior of some animals, and we got on the wrong track a long time ago.
I liked your story very much Michael.
Johan
What does one consider as “Technology”?
An external manifestation of the human mind?
Allowing for one’s existence to be more controled.
Could speach and even stone tools not be classified as Technology?
Everything that follows a break through. Almost all things man has created can be tracked to FIRE and the WHEEL thus everything since then is technology.
Speach is not technology. Untill we ENHANCE it then it will become tech.
As for the manifestation of the human mind? no thats too general. Each device is made by a different person. so it would be more easy for you to argue that technology or a PERTICULAR technology is the manifestation of ONE person’s mind(one person’s thoughts.)
And synth got to remember this, even though YOU are controlled by a machine somebody at the verry top of the piramid of control is controlling the machines, thus humans are still on top for now.
The nature of reality can never be separated so there actually exist something like technology or art. There are no true borders between technology and biology. We are only dealing with forms and movement. Forms and movement may harmonize or they may not harmonize with life. There are no insides and outsides; just a total holistic complexity where it’s parts fits in. The only thing that separate us from this harmony is our abstract mentality. What we call technology is also mostly mental. The substance of technology is very simple, but the process to discover this simplicity is very complex though.
Johan
I love it, I have been looking for Intelligent feedback for awhile since I moved to Amsterdam.
Okay I follow you on the human mind.
As for the speach thing,
I must say that I feel it has been Enhanced…
For the simple fact that humans didn’t just start long deep intriquet conversations right away.
More like sounds that related to…'Hey watch out for that Bear!!"
Now I feel we are moving into the realm of multipile meaning/understanding.
For when I say,
“Becasue We are all different, This is what makes us the Same…”
Many Doors begin to appear in the hall of possibilties.
Decifering this, shows that there are many levels of meaning to one Phrase.
So Has speach not become a Technology?
I can’t decide if i think that language is a technology or not. I used to think that it was, but then i read this article which asks if the reason we think of language as a technology is due to the way that computers have changed how we view language.
This is just a playing with words, and it will only give you are more abstract separation from the subject. Everything that exist is substance; it can not be called separate things. If language is a “tool” then all aspects of communication should be called “tools”. Communication is a premiere function in life.
Is not a bird’s nest technology? What we use to call technology is nothing unique, what’s interesting is if the technology harmonize or not with the functions of life.
Man did not invent the wheel, Scarab Beetles used this technology before man.
Johan
I think it is useful to make a distinction between what is brought about by evolution, and thus brought about by chance, and what is invented and then passed from generation to generation through communication. I might be that some ideas may have been inspired by nature, but no other aimal, save some types of chimp, can aquire new ways of building a nest or such like, it is re-programmed. We would not have a wheel if all our memories were simultaneously wiped and all traces of civilisation erased, nor would we have language, although it has now been suggested that our brains are such that we would rapidly develop one (well loads, but u know what I mean).
Hence I would say that these are both technology as it takes timeto be invented and refined.
I do not agree. A human baby that is born in this civilization would invent a wheel in his youth even if he/she was brought up separated from the civilization. This function is genetic by now because it harmonize with nature. I human brain is much more complicated now then it where when we invented the wheel in history. (sorry, I now noticed that you wrote this).
Technology that does not harmonize with nature will not last because the genes that carries the information will not survive. I’m however not a strict materialist/Newton mechanic; and I also think information is stored in the holistic field (collective subconsciousness), and that put a new dimention to this as well. Actually this is probably the premire source, that in it’s turn reflects in the genes (one is not causing the other). This field does not include abstract functions.
Johan