Information overload. How much is too much, and what's the point of making something we really don't need nor want to know what it tells us? Will we get a choice if it is engrained into everything we do? I don't want my shower to ready itself nor tell me when it's ready, it is a luxury that i neither need or want. But if what we think will come...comes, what choice will we have but to accept the whole and not the parts?
Some things just can't be. Costs of making cannot exceed necessity/want of people. I believe that it is now that we decide the parts, and that as time passes it will be increasingly difficult to decide what information you want to get about your surroundings. With new mind boggling inventions being brought to the public's attention monthly it is now that we decide if we want it or not.
Just like the telegraph, much of the technology that we have today could have been just a passing fad that fades away. Without a couple crucial elements and discoveries ous whole way of living could be dramatically changed. Some would say that if one person didn't figure it out another would have later, but would they have really? I guess you just never know. It's like wondering what it would be like if Germany won the war, an infinite of possibilities and ways it could have been.
3 comments:
I do not think that the technology that is being developed is a "passing fad" like the telegraph. I do not really believe that the telegraph was a fad, but rather it got phased out over the corse of improving technology. This is the way things are in that regard.
It is interesting to ponder how much is too much when it comes to modern convinces. To many people, the clap-on clap-off lights are excessive, but what we are looking at soon is way more drastic than that. The convince that we will soon enjoy will be of monstrous proportions. I think that in our lifetime, we will have machines in our houses that cook for us and do our laundry. Maybe that is just a dream but it seems pretty feasible to me.
I tend to agree that most technologies that exist today are there just for the sake of us being able to do it. When you really think about it there are very few things we use on a daily basis that we really need. Some who use a very traditionalistic argument may bring up that we don't need ANY technology but that's and extreme example. For instance, right now as I type this, from one machine I have the ability to listen/read/watch news stories while I listen to music playing over video that is running in the background while I create a spreadsheet. Would one really NEED to able to do that much at once? Of course not, but we have the ability and the technology to do so, so it would seem like a waste not to "push the limit" so to speak. This ties in similarly with the information overload. There's so much coming at you so fast, there's bound to be something lost in the moment.
While I wouldn't go so far as to say "fad." The gradual improvement and phasing out of inferior technology is a reasonable expectation. So it's best to use it while you can before it becomes a footnote in a History text
I think it is a delicate balance of how much information is too much information or how much technology is too much technology. I mean what about being able to start your car without being in it. It might be a luxury you don’t need but what about the horribly cold morning or night in which it was there to warm your car while waiting inside the comfort of your home. Right then in there I bet you would be dang happy to have had it.
I kind of believe that this technology and information overload is essential. Yea like the previous comment mentioned that the technologies we today exist because we have the capabilities to make them just for the sake of making them and I believe this creates whole new possibilities of where we can go which may spawn things we could have never imagined.
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