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Will technology save us?


geokker

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Schools most likely started using calculators to improve the students' grades, not their intelligence, because students' average grades decide government funding. As it was already said, necessity is the mother of invention. It's going to be an endless disappointment to hope that someday pure intentions such as curiosity or ethics will ever drive the human machine.

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Back to a facinating point-

"The most simplest things are often the most evolved"

 

While it was worded a little clumsily, it highlights an oft-overlooked fact in evolutionary theory. Everything alive is equally "evolved," some have simply changed more then others on the outside. In fact, things are the most generalized are often the longest lived.

 

Think about ants- general body type. Simple- most ants are the same.

Sharks- been around forever, and far less complicated then cuttlefish.

Rats- probably similar to the first mammals.

 

Generalists always win out in times of crisis- specialists often die out. So in fact, the simplest technology will probably come out in the end as the best (after any crisis). Give me a knife, ax, and shovel over a supercomputer after any crisis.

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Back to a facinating point-

"The most simplest things are often the most evolved"

 

While it was worded a little clumsily, it highlights an oft-overlooked fact in evolutionary theory. Everything alive is equally "evolved," some have simply changed more then others on the outside. In fact, things are the most generalized are often the longest lived.

Not true. Things that have longer life cycles are less evolved. However, to have a long life cycle you need to have size, intelligence and a slow rate of evolutionary change.

Generalists always win out in times of crisis- specialists often die out. So in fact, the simplest technology will probably come out in the end as the best (after any crisis). Give me a knife, ax, and shovel over a supercomputer after any crisis.

Evolution - tough on aardvarks, tough on the causes of aardvarks. :)

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Getting back on topic, I'm talking about the distant future here. Remember Luke Skywalkers hand? [Which was from the distant past, but nevermind.] Will that 'happen'? I can easily imagine prosthetic technology increasing in sophistication. There may come a day when every baby is implanted with a chip to monitor their health, augment their intelligence, suplement their immune system etc. Imagine a day when every newborn has a twin who is taken away, brain scooped out and kept for spare parts.

 

It is a fact that technology is rapidly increasing in complexity, ubiquity and peceived importance e.g. mobile phones - we all feel we 'must' carry them about all the time. Multiply this feeling by a thousand. Our relationship with tech is a close one already. I contend that in the future, we will be indistinguishable from it.

 

No, in many ways it is ruining us. I am astounded by the people I meet that cannot calculate in their head or on paper.

 

Whilst I also despair at the education system and the seeming lack of what I (perhaps wrongly) perceive to be fundamental understanding - to a certain extent - so what? People used to type a string of commands to copy data on a computer. Now we use GUI's. The types of information we need now has changed. There is also much more knowledge to acquire. We no longer stand in a field with only a tree to break the horizon - data hits us from a billion directions.

 

If someone invented a babelfish, no one would bother learning a language - it would be a waste of time.

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