A prudent society would put technology on hold

[IDMclean]

Evidence indicates that we do not have the intellectual sophistication commensurate with the technology and thus we misuse it.

 

I would like to see this evidence.

 

As for McLuhan. I fail to see the direct relevance of his observations on this discussion. It does not peg technology itself as a dangerous entity, but as medium and in many cases a medium without content. What puzzles me then is that he states that the medium is the message, and my experience of mediums is that the message is the content that they carry. (a topic for another thread.)

 

Now the slight upgrade question? Simplely put by itself in regards to just you it's rather insiginificant, but put it into the hands of a few hundred, or a few thousand. That slight upgrade becomes more and more significant as you get roughly geometric growth. Each computer lending to the potential productivity of the individual involved.

 

I don't know about you people, but I feel that I am resposible enought to use the technologies that we have today. Despite their relative sophistication to past ages, they are childrens toys. With the soul exception of weapons, all technology is behind the power-responsibility curve of most developed nations.

 

Now I am not going to argue that we as the more responsible nations, as the developed nations have a responsibility to help undeveloped nations educate, grow and become an integrated part of the world community.

 

I would poise the proposition of:

"A prudent society would make individual improvement, and the goal of mass self-actualization, it's priority."

[coberst]

KickAss

 

Your proposition is a great suggestion.

 

I would poise the proposition of:

"A prudent society would make individual improvement, and the goal of mass self-actualization, it's priority."

 

 

“So an attitude is caused when we think about something the same way over and over until it becomes automatic. The resulting actions in response to the thought also become automatic. Change the habit of thought and you change the attitude. Change the attitude and you change the resulting action.”

http://credit.about.com/cs/beforeyoubuy/index.htm

 

“The Medium is The Message” is the phrase that made Marshall McLuhan famous. It is a phrase most of us, young and old, have heard. Until a few days ago it was a phrase that confounded me.

 

Let’s get very fundamental here and go back to the invention of the alphabet to understand what McLuhan is talking about and why it is important.

 

“The Greek myth about the alphabet was that Cadmus, reputedly the king who introduced the phonetic letters into Greece, sowed dragoon’s teeth, and they sprang up armed men. Like any other myth, this one capsulates a prolonged process into a flashing insight. The alphabet meant power and authority and control of military structures at a distance. When combined with papyrus, the alphabet spelled the end of the stationary temple bureaucracies and the priestly monopolies of knowledge and power.”

 

“The phonetic alphabet is a unique technology…This stark division and parallelism between a visual and an auditory world was both crude and ruthless, culturally speaking. The phonetically written sacrifices worlds of meaning and perception that were secured by forms like the hieroglyphs and the Chinese ideogram. These culturally richer forms of writing, however, offered men no means of sudden transfer from the magically discontinuous and traditional world of the tribal word into the cool and uniform visual medium.”

 

“All of these forms [pictographic and hieroglyphic] give pictorial expression to oral meanings. As such, they approximate the animated cartoon and are extremely unwieldy, requiring many signs for the infinity of data operations of social action. In contrast, the phonetic alphabet, by a few letters only, was able to encompass all languages.”

 

Consider the invention of the printing press and the introduction of books to the society. A book communicates a message. Many books communicate many messages. ‘The book’ communicates the same message to everyone who comes into contact with the book. The book transmits the same message to everyone while many books transmit many different messages to many different people.

 

Evolution moves very slowly. We adapt to our environment very slowly. We survive because we do adapt. When we change more quickly than we can adapt we face problems that we have not had the time to make the kind of adjustments necessary.

 

The habits we acquire determine our state of mind. Our changing habits are part of this process of adaptation to our environment. Do not think of environment, as being just the quality of our air or water but it is a broad term signifying the world we live in.

 

 

 

 

 

 

So we have changed very dramatically our habits that were part of us when we knew little and understood much. I am speaking relatively here. What happens to us as a result of this dramatic change? I do not know but I only point to the fact as worth consideration.

 

Examine how we sit and watch TV for several hours everyday. When we watch TV we are constantly being transported perceptively from one scene to another. Think for a minute if instead of sitting and watching TV we were physically escorted done a hallway with many doors. Then we open a door and are physically placed into this world we see on TV. Our reaction would be very different. In other words we are creatures prepared for a certain world that no longer exists. This is the definition of a forthcoming extinction if we think about the meaning of evolution.

[CraigD]

Examine how we sit and watch TV for several hours everyday. When we watch TV we are constantly being transported perceptively from one scene to another. Think for a minute if instead of sitting and watching TV we were physically escorted done a hallway with many doors. Then we open a door and are physically placed into this world we see on TV. Our reaction would be very different. In other words we are creatures prepared for a certain world that no longer exists. This is the definition of a forthcoming extinction if we think about the meaning of evolution.

To fit the usual evolutionary prescription for extinction, an organism persists in behavior that was well-adapted to a previous environment (“world”), but poorly adapted for its current one.

 

The “TV world” described above is not one that that H.Sapiens has adapted to. Such a world has never physically existed.

 

The ability of human beings to imagine themselves in distant or unreal places, typically with the aid of storytellers, drawings, books, and, recently, photographs, motion pictures, and TV, appears to have existed in some form for many thousands of years, and have played an important role in our evolution as a social animal.

 

A noteworthy feature of the progression of media employed in this behavior is that is has not been, as a reasonable but naive person might assume, simply an increase in representational realism – crude drawings to accurate drawings to photographs to moving photographs to “virtual reality”. Despite the availability of machines and techniques that can very accurately portray physical reality, people continue to prefer a mixture of accuracy (eg: 3-dimensional moving photographs), purposeful distortion (eg: cartoons, impressionism, abstract art) and representation (eg: books, spoken narration). For this reason, I don’t think a single medium, even one as technically impressive as current or future TV, is likely to dominate human culture.

[CraigD]

I build a device using materials and techniques available to any university science department, which allows me to confirm various predictions of my theory. One such prediction, however, is that fundamental TOE-stuff can be nudged is a particular way using the device that causes the entire Earth to rapidly contract into something super-dense, coincidentally killing every living thing on it.

…

Don't worry, I won't even point out that your arguement is based on the fallacy of either parade of the horribles or slippery slope. I am not sure which exactly.

I do see that danger, but I find it irrational. …

I wouldn’t characterize my argument as irrational, or an example of either of the fallacies, rather, it’s disingenuous – for the particular hypothetical example I provided, I’m aware of well-supported physics that prohibits it. So my description, while appearing scientifically reasonable, is actually no more so than

An magickian discovers a spell to summon a terrible demon that would devour the world…

I’ve engaged in rhetorical trickery to make a point – in other words, I’ve behaved in a sophisticated manner. (Although the adjective “sophisticated” – literally “like a sophist” - is commonly used to express approval, one should note that its origin and usual definition is derogatory)

 

The point I was attempting to express is this round-about way is this:

There appears in the anti-technology community a strong suspicion that technology is leading humankind toward a dramatic catastrophe. Members of these communities commonly believe alarming yet scientifically inaccurate assertions such as “pollution will lead to the death of all life on Earth”, “a runaway greenhouse effect will cause conditions on Earth to become like those on Venus”, “the explosion of only a fraction of all the nuclear weapons in the world’s arsenals could break the Earth into fragments”, and “artificial ‘germ warfare’ diseases could kill 99% or more of the human race.” Were these assertions true, prudence – or mathematical risk analysis – would dictate that measures at least as strong as those currently taken to reduce the use of health-threatening drugs should be implemented. However, the assertions - and the scenario in my previous post - are not true. Spending resources to prevent the impossible is not prudent.

 

This is not to say that pollution, global warming, nuclear weapons, and germ warfare do not pose real threats that require attention, but that exaggerating their severity is not useful in combating these threats. A major problem, as I see it, is convincing people who hold scientifically inaccurate beliefs – many of whom are dedicated, intelligent, hardworking people – of their inaccuracy. A solution, as I see it, is scientific education, both within and outside of schools.

 

I believe a major obstacle to science education is the split between Science and Humanities that appears to have widened so greatly in the last 100 years or so – what Snow refers to as “The Two Cultures”, particularly as it manifests itself among educators. A solution to this problem exceeds my ability to, with confidence, imagine.

[coberst]

Craig

 

 

I have put in a good bit of time reading his book “Understanding Media” and I must admit that I have to read and reread him to comprehend his meaning.

 

I always got the impression that he was explaining just how all technology affects us because all technology is essentially an extension of our self and as such it had great effects on our habits and thus our attitudes and behavior. I was much impressed by what I considered to be very unusually unique insights.

 

As I comprehend him he is trying to show us that the message is the technology it self. It is the technology, which is an extension of our self that has such a profound effect upon us without our comprehension.

[IDMclean]

The TV, Sports, Books (fictional and otherwise), Movies and the Entertainment industry on a whole is more or less preparing us to confront an enviroment which we have traditionally avoided, and have left to the mad men, shaman, priests and other spiritualists.

 

That is the enviroment that is within the organism. That is the purpose of stories, and entertainment is to prepare the individual for what they will find once they look inside. That's not to say that is the expressed purpose, but that is the overall purpose for storytelling. In psychology I would say that entertainment is used to resolve psychosocial tramua.

 

Now true, this is not useful if your dropped into a jungle or set to deal with getting a job or so called "real world" enviroments. Though dismissal on this premise alone would be unwise, as the human brain makes no distiction between what goes on out there, and what goes on in here. That is there are two realities manifest in everyperson and each one is equal in priority in the race for survival. What we perceive and what we conceive.

[cwes99_03]

Whatever happened to "Necessity is the mother of all invention."?

[stamarama]

Whatever happened to "Necessity is the mother of all invention."?

 

 

Perhaps it's been replaced with, "Marketing is the mother of all invention."

[Buffy]

Perhaps it's been replaced with, "Marketing is the mother of all invention."

You'll get no complaints from me about that one! :evil:

 

Without marketing, life itself would be impossible,

Buffy Freberg

[IMAMONKEY!]

Originally Posted by stamarama

 

Perhaps it's been replaced with, "Marketing is the mother of all invention."

 

or perhaps:

 

"Sloth is the mother of Invention."

 

~Garfield :)

 

Why do people invent things? To make life and work easier. They also did it when it was needed for the survival of the human race.. or maybe just their particular country/tribe. Genius is an amazing thing. It is what helps us live comfortably and explore our universe. By these undeniable facts (of course someone will dispute that) Technology/invention is a neccesity of life. Hell, even animals adapt to their environment. Technology is just one more adaptation by us to fit into our environment.:confused:

 

Regards

[CraigD]

"Sloth is the mother of Invention."

 

~Garfield :)

or …

 

“Progress isn't made by early risers. It's made by lazy men trying to find easier ways to do something. “

- From “Time Enough For Love” (1973) by Robert A Heinlein

 

Perhaps we should declare a moratorium on early rising and compulsive hard work. I suspect it would be easier to find support for than the one on technology Coberst has proposed - I'm ready to sign up. :confused:

[TheBigDog]

I'm ready to sign up. :)

I have been a practitioner for years. The only way I see 5:00 AM is to stay up for it.

 

Bill

[cwes99_03]

Has anyone else noted Coberst lack of attention to his thread? He seems to start them up and then bail on them when faced with a challenge? Sorry maybe that didn't belong here.

[TheFaithfulStone]

The only way I see 5:00 AM is to stay up for it.

 

That's why I hate sunrises.

 

TFS

[Turtle]

Having of late embarked on the reading of a biography of our beloved Ben Franklin, and no less adopting his style of verbiage, I have some observations on this topic. (As if!:) :shrug: )

First, somewhere earlier the Clown made reference to the middle class as a recent development and as Franklin prided himself on his place among the 'leather aprons' I offer that as the only necessary contradiction of such a ridiculous claim.

As to the idea of putting technology on hold to benefit society I am firmly with the Big Dog's statement "A prudent society would be properly outraged at the danger of such a pinheaded suggestion. Go join the Amish." Naturally I have a quote from Pragmatic Ben in support of this position : "As we enjoy great advantages from the invention of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours, and this we should do freely and generously." - B.F.

[Turtle]

I

I don't mind critism, I just really dislike non-constructive, non-critical (or hypocritical) critism. So before one goes about dismissing a proposition as ridiculous, I feel that they should examine it, and then give a full analysis, to the extend of their capabilities, on the proposition. To simply say something is ridiculous gives no sense of what is right or wrong with it and is non-constructive, and not rigourously critical.

 

Poppycock! The correction of a mistatement of fact is neither non-constructive nor trivial and requires no further analysis. You squirm at the slightest criticism as you try and twist 'round your original statment(s) in justification with qualifiers such as "relatively" and "historically speaking". While your writing is improving, your reasoning is not. :shrug:

[Turtle]

These claims are extrordinary, and therefore it would follow that they require extrordinary evidence.

 

Beyond simply that, lets talk definitions, so that we have a common basis of communication from which to debate.

...

The middle class I would like to point out is an artificial construct, due to progressive manuevering of our economic systems. That is they exist(ed?) because there have been economic policies put in place in the recent past which encouraged the growth of a bridge between the extreames.

Since much of the premise of your argument that follows the above quote is 'the recent past', and middle classes go back to the 'ancient past', then the premise is false and so the conclusion is false. Your sociological babble about "economic, industrial, and sociopolitical policies" etc. ad nauseum equally apply to any society.

You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. For a clown, you are decidedly without a whit of humor. :shrug:

 

On the business of 'early to bed, early to rise, yada yada yada', old Ben was disturbed when he learnt how many Calvinist folk took such clap seriously to the word that he writ to but better sell almanacs.:hihi: *

 

*I'll look for that passage in the biography.:hihi: