Just reading through the threads this morning I see a lot of usage of the word ‘progress’.
It’s a tricky one, maybe we’d better discuss it. Luckily, here’s one I made earlier.
From my blog:
OK. So we’re not a bit brighter than we were 50,000 years ago. That’s not hard to see. So how do we define progress? Unlike others perhaps, I’m not interested in progress, I’m interested in attempting to shape an environment conducive to the maintenance of the species. If someone wants to call that progress, that’s their perogative. But since the word is there and it isn’t likely to go away, how about keeping it simple?
Progress: Taking something that isn’t working, fixing it, and fixing it in a way that it won’t stop working again (within a reasonable warranty period). Since there is nothing that isn’t governed by MTBF, “fixing” includes provision for constant adjustments as necessary.
Perhaps progress is the ability to say, “New and Improved”?
Population size, density, and respective technologies.
Tab, I’ve said since my first day here that there is no such thing as progress … and you’ve often questioned my position … hmmm … come to the Dark Side, fine Tabula, we have the cookies.
tent,
Definition of progress: stopping the continual viral like behavior of being extractors and excretors.
Can we? HIIK.
Mas,
Sorry, no can do. We gotta eat and poop. BUT, we might find better ways of co-existing within the environment as we find it. Will we? Prolly not, but we could at least make the effort. Better than sitting around watching wrestling on TV…
Hey Mas, good to see you’re still knocking about. =D>
I’ve no problem with technology evolving, or perhaps ‘being bred’ into new shapes - but ‘progress’ as a word is a bit linear, arbitrary and comforting for my liking. Makes people lazy.
Tab,
If you think about it, most of our activities are approached in a linear methodology. We don’t butter the bread before we toss it in the toaster. 
While sponteneity and novelty are part of our experiences, the vast majority are linear, arbitrary, and designed to provide comfortable doing without thinking. It’s the last part that is the sticky wicket. Our not thinking often leads us up the blind alley.
“Why? I dunno. It seemed like a good idea at the time.” 
Funny you should say that, when I was a kid I used to do just that - quick-fried bread.
Okay, so I did set the toaster on fire once.
Have you heard of a concept called ‘random walk’…? I think that’s what we approximate on a society wide basis.
“Random walk”… I’m a bit behind the curve, as always, but I think I get the gist of it. Yes, for all our so-called rationality, we are very irrational. The paths we tred are as much serendipity as deliberately planned. We pick up one end of the string, follow it till it branches off, then follow the branch to the next… We like to say “I meant for it to happen this way”, but it’s mostly a lie.
Still, most of our actions, most of our thinking, most of our everything we do is linear. Perhaps not in the “big picture”, but certainly in the details. We see beginning - end, time, and all the other linear expressions as well. What is habit if not a linear repeat of behavior?
Toaster on fire? It’s a good thing your mother loved you…
Sure, but on an individual basis only. When you add a massively-parallel architecture, then all this singular linearness, becomes somethig else.
It’s like “going to work”: Take any particular occupant of any particular car, and ask him or her what they ae doing, they’ll say “Going to work.” Can’t get very much more linear than that. One person, one choice, and presumably, one ‘perfect’ chosen route firmly in mind.
But then if you step up and away, and monitor traffic-flow overall, you’ll begin to notice spontaneous patterns emerging as the actions of one driver tip the behaviour of others into a cascade of simular (I suppose unkindly ‘herd-orientated’) choice and actions.
ie. While the individual is linear, the whole is recursive, and to a great extent, unpredictable in the instant - random.