In overall opinion, I believe most people would agree that technology is indeed a blessing. When we compare our society to times past, there is an obvious difference in efficiency, communication, and readily available information. No matter how much of a blessing technology is, as a society we are becoming far too dependent on it. Case and point: calculators. I am going to use an anonymous example to demonstrate. I am going to call her Jessica.
Me: "Jessica, do you know the square root of 1?"
Jessica: "Is it like point 653 (.653)?"
Me: "Do you know what the square root of 1 means?"
Jessica: "What times itself equals 1?"
Me: What times 1 equals 1?"
Jessica: "I don't know!"
Me: "Do you have a calculator?"
Jessica: "Yes."
Me: Find the square root of 1."
And she did. It was no problem. Regardless, she was angry that I made her feel stupid. And she was even more upset when I asked her if I could use this in my story.
In this example technology is teaching people to be lazy. Instead of knowing to find the answer to a function, and a fairly simple function at that, she needed a calculator.
Other examples you ask? How about almost any modern communications that require electricity? Cell phones, computers, and even our national defence system all relies on electricity. Yes there are power generators that would hold us for a while if something major were to happen, but there is no way it could hold permanently.
Try to imagine a worldwide power outage. Not for one day, but for one month, or hell maybe even permanently. Could modern people really survive? No refrigerators, no telephones, and eventually no cars (as we rely on gas and electricity). Where would we be? It's difficult to imagine how much more difficult it would be to live. Imagine people who need technology for health reasons, they no longer have what is required for them to live.
How about the massive shock wave of panic that would whip through the world. No one would have any idea what happened seeing as there is no real news any more.
We as a society need to do two things; teach ourselves to survive without modern technology in case the worse could happen and prepare ourselves for the day when electricity is no longer available, because it isn't a matter of "if" a worldwide power outage were to occur, but when it will happen. And, in this modern age with our complete and utter reliance on technology, we as a civilization would be lost.
The state of American education is pretty poor (unless we are talking about the elite universities and institutions).
To be honest, there is luxury technology and there is needed technology, can we say our lives now are better than... 1988? just 20 years ago, we had technology.... no gadgets, no mobile phones all over, no annoying kids with their music players.
I exist quite well without using my mobile phone too often but I am on the internet all the time, but I think that technology around us really turned into a noise hazard.
I know people have the high points of "things they know well" and "things they don't know so well". But I was is World History last year and believe it, a girl asked this ... "Who is Hitler?".
Great article.
OUR state, not ARE state
ITS education, not IT'S education
Sure, we depend on technology, to a dangerous extent, but I think it will impact our society more than our ability to procure the basic essentials of life. We're not looking at the demise of humanity, but rather a loss of many luxuries that we take for granted.
The problem you your root of 1 example is that it's an easy mistake to make. Give her a problem involving long division, or something more traditional, and see how she fares. It might take some time to work out, but I think you've demonstrated our lack of patience more than anything.
What would I do without it though? Dunno. Probably start drinking and playing poker more often...
Worked after Ike robbed us of electricity for 2 weeks.
However, I think this would happen for the best. The idea is that the world would essentially be cleansing itself. On the one hand, I certainly wouldn't enjoy dying from starvation! Nobody in their right mind would! On the other hand, have humans occupied this world for too long? Should another species or even kingdom take over (I vote plants!
- This post was written by a demented psycho that nobody should listen to or even consider giving attention to.
Hoping next year i will get to do 6 months in afghanistan so that will be a test of lack of technology properly(outside of military technology obviously).
As for electricity. Fact is, it's not going to permanently dissapear. It's like saying is the pacific ocean going to dry up, which we know it won't. Although we live in an age of technology like EMP's for example which can seriously and widespread disrupt electricity, it's just a matter of keeping the fundamental roots of life sustained outside of online life such as family, health and wellbeing, community etc.
Some people may seem like losing technology is like losing a limb but being realistic about it all, amputees carry on a happy life usually so it's always possible should it happen but as i say if should or when it happens lifes nessecities and core issues will replace them. Instead of consoles it'll be dishes, instead of computer it'll be radio. etc etc etc
I guess we should just be thankful for inventions like gas/diesel generators and batteries.
Although the fact that she felt stupid afterwards probably shows that she just didn't know very well how square roots work, probably you could have done the same to some other poor girl a 100 years ago by telling her to look it up in a square root table or something
We're humans we can hunt, survival of the fittest and wisest don't need a truck to bring food in an emergency
Edit: also consider how some countries - such as Afghanistan - are able to survive without electricity for long periods of time. Whilst there is a lot of violence still in Afghanistan coupled with a very unreliable electricity supply, the majority of people are able to survive.
since key word is 'survive' , then obviously the answer is YES.
BUT... if you completely got rid of pretty much all my technology (i.e. PC's/Internet/Video Games/Movies and basically most electronic related stuff) my overall enjoyment of life would drop quite a bit since it's pretty much apart of me now since i basically grew up with most of that stuff for the most part.
im 29 years old... so basically when i was a real young kid... all i had back then was some video games... other than that we played outdoors alot but once my mid-ish teens came along, that's when i started to get 'hooked' on technology alot more and generally had less and less physical activities etc.
but it's sorta like 'Vamp' said above... once your power goes out (even for a few hours or so) it makes you realize how bad it SUCKS without stuff you take for granted like general electricity etc... cause without that pretty much EVERYTHING is stone age, lol, well maybe not stone age but damn close to it in a way.
p.s. beastage said, "The state of American education is pretty poor (unless we are talking about the elite universities and institutions)."...
my reply... regardless if that's true or not i think kids nowadays are pushed to hard!
(this is pretty much common sense and im sure will infuriate alot of those teachers at college (i.e. ones that teach english etc etc.. i.e. the unneeded stuff in general) cause they know it's the truth lol)
and in fact my cousin (who goes to college) wrote a article on this for one of his classes and most (if not all) the students who read it agreed with it and said it makes sense etc... but the funny thing is his grade for the report was obviously lower than it should have been due to it going against the teachers in that class in general so they screwed his grade over a little bit)
Last edited by ThaCrip on 11 Nov 2008 - 11:10
yes, i can while i was able to add, rest, multiply and divide.
x * 0.15 = S.
You would restructure that to be x = S/0.15, and then you would have the original price of the item. While we often do the rearrangement in our heads, the underlying principle is still there - we have an unknown, and we need to find it given some information. Algebra simply turns this idea into nothing but letters (occasionally Greek letters) and numbers.
Another example might be a computer programmer who's creating a program that generates a pie chart for some data that a user inputs. A pie chart is a circle, and in order to find out how to divide the chart and create the "perfect" circle for representing the data, the formula C = PI * 2r is used, where C is the circumference (how big the circle is around), PI is the Greek letter used to denote the irrational mathematical constant 3.141592..., and r is the radius of the circle (for knowing where the center of the circle is). From there, it is a matter of figuring out where to draw lines to ensure the chart accurately represents the data.
Algebra is all around us. Without it, I'm not sure programming as we know it would exist.
e^(PI * i) = -1, where `e' is Euler's number (2.718....), PI is the irrational mathematical constant 3.141592...., and `i' is obviously the imaginary number. In other words: e^(PI * i) = i^2!
I could discuss this stuff all day! ^_^
errr
Survival is hardwired on our bodies, however whether we choose to survive or not, depends on how good life is.
And IMHO life w/o electricity = dull, so dull = death 4 me O.o
Too often people have a misguided thought process that encourages them to fear dependence on technology tools. "What if it goes down? What if it breaks?" What? The tractor never "went down" nor broke? There was never a season of little rain for your fields? Your blunt clubbing instrument never got lost or stolen? What did you do then? You adapted. You fixed the tractor or got it fixed. You found/made another, maybe improved club.
Computer/electronic technology provides a great set of tools that help us more than survive. People who are in applicable countries are looking for more than survival. And if all these tools were taken away in an instant, is it bad to have not learned The Caveman's Guide to Basic Survival? No.
And I wish I learned more relevant material in public school than I did, as I've forgotten most of it now as it rarely comes in handy. Knowing where to search, how to search, and how to recognize relevance in your search for tools, people, and methods to perform your task(s) at hand are skills I would have rather have learned a long time ago.
Commenting has either been disabled on this article or you are not logged in. Click here to login or register, its free!
Note: Anonymous commenting is disabled in order to keep the quality of responses to a high standard.