Tech Article for You

Ever get the feeling that things may be slipping through the cracks right behind your back? That the future somehow continues sidling into place all around us with increasingly surreptitious speed?

Nevermind. There’s too much to do. Gotta visit the bank machine before going shopping and using the new self check-out tellers at Wal-Mart. Then it’s off to the computer video-kiosk downtown to order your movies for next week. Don’t forget to text message Bob on your way to remind him to email Joey before Sunday. Good thing you got the kids the newest PlayStation - they’ll be glued to that for the next two weeks, leaving you free to catch all of your shows without interruption.

How did all of this start? Besides the T.V, where was all of this technology ten years ago?

In the field of computer technology, there is a little thing called Moore’s Law that states, in layman’s terms, that the processing capabilities of the basic computer chip have been increasing exponentially every eighteen months since their inception. This will, by around the year 2017, result in hyper-intelligent machines that are atoms thick.

On average, most humans in the ‘modern’ world now spend much more of their time relating to machines than other human beings, even if they may be using those machines as a medium to reach others. We are becoming increasingly dependent on them without even pausing to realize it. Remember Y2K? Yeah, people were scared. In every aspect of our lives now, we need the machines to function, and it only continues to snowball.

Nanotechnology is merely years away. The human genome has now been completely - if roughy - mapped, providing us with the very blueprints to human evolution. Synthetic Biology has just recently emerged, handing scientists the one trump card nature still held: the power to create life from scratch. And for those in the field of Artifical Intelligence, they are now locked in a desperate race against Moore’s Law, to create a ‘friendly A.I’ before time runs out. They’ve only got one chance.

Everything is going to change, very soon. It already is. In the last decade we’ve seen the beginnings of a massive paradigm shift in - in the words of Raymond Kurzweil, futurist, inventor and author - “the nature of work, human learning, government, warfare, the arts, and our concepts of ourselves.”

Immortality is becoming a reality - quantum physics has shown us this. It will simply, eventually be up to those who choose to go one way or the other - if we make it that far. There are numerous possible pitfalls along the way, of cataclysmic proportions. It is, in my mind, the most important issue facing us as a species to date, and barely anyone seems to be aware of it.

There is so much involved with all of this - so many different angles to be considered, arguments to be counted, that it’s nearly impossible to know where to stand. But it’s real, and it’s happenning. We, every one of us, need to take a look at the bigger picture and decide how we feel about it, and where we fit in.

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Many have said that technology is prostituting what is to be human. They say that humans are hunter-gatherers and peaceful creatures by nature. They say that humans are loving and caring and close social species with love for family and friends. We see this in the great apes and our genetics are similar. Whether you are one to believe in evolutionary theory or creationism is really immaterial in the debate of whether humanity is being ruined by modern advances in technology.

But is technology really the reason for the decline in human behavior, wars or even the new anti-social norm amongst the many? Is the problem more with the family unit, society or is it indeed an issue of advancing technologies. What does technology have to do with the decline in ethics? The over all integrity factor in most first world nations is not very becoming of such a purported noble species. If we look at emerging nations, we do not see much better values, so all of humanity seems to be lacking everywhere you look, even where no technology exists.

If this is the case then where is the argument against technology or the future advances in technology in trade for a better humanity? If humans were back in the stone ages, well they would be throwing sticks and stones at each other, back stabbing their neighbors and fighting over tools that they made. They would be stealing each other’s food in their gardens and raping their women and where is the ethics of humanity without technology? There would be no difference would there?

Well it appears to me that very few are honest here this present period and no one seems to be living without hypocrisy, as they all seem to like the little lie they live? Who are you or I or anyone for that matter to tell them they are wrong? And the question remains what does technology have to do with the decline in human morality? What is the difference if one of the cave dwelling homo sapiens, steals from you or a ghetto kid with a gun robs a liquor store? Or a person with an attorney lying about fact, distorting truth and manipulating the law files a lawsuit and takes one of your assets or wins some cash in a settlement agreement? Or a hacker steals your identity using technology, then wires it to another place faster than you can trace where the money went after your bank account is sucked dry? Is it really the technology causing humans a problem or stifling our humanity or what it is to be human in that case?

Besides, technology is a good thing. And if we have the ability to make human societies and civilizations more productive thru technology then well, we ought to do it. If we have the ability to streamline, communication, distribution, transportation, education, language, monetary flows or better our infrastructures, then it should be done, for efficiency purposes if nothing else. Then maybe humans will have more time to reflect on their behavior and look in the mirror and decide where they can make personal changes to improve themselves and the world around them, thus technology is a good thing, not bad. Think on this.

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