Technology and Society

I can't help but think that this western world that we live in just isn't good enough. I keep seeing all these technological advances, and new ways of communicating, and new gadgets, and things meant to entertain us, and keep thinking that this isn't the way it's supposed to be.

It seems like all this progressive technology never lives up to what it promises. I look back on the industrial revolution and see a crescendo of life altering and life improving technologies. Then suddenly it seems from about WWII onwards the promise that all this knowledge and science and technology holds becomes less meaningful and less good and becomes something more akin to an unstoppable monster.

We are loosing our very humanity. It used to be that people would actually talk to each other, face to face. Then came computers and cellphones and the internet and it's all gone. Even as I blog on the internet there is no real social interaction, no reading of body language, no smells, or tactial sensations. It doesn't seem real.

I see the western world and see that we are all withdrawing from society and I hate it. I loved technology, I used to dream of being the next Edison, or Henry Ford, inventing the next big thing, the next life altering technology, but I see now that technology cannot fix the problems of the world.

It takes people face to face, discussing, arguing, planning, thinking, and yes, sometimes fighting. I want that. I want to be in a real society, a real culture, something tangible, something physical.

These computers are great machines, but they are just that, machines. No more capable of being human, than a tree could be human, and yet we treat these machines as extensions of our own bodies. Our tongues, our minds, our memories, and we even let these machines mimic the physical world.

I don't dispute the amazing capabilities these machines have to do work, work that would take millennia, in some cases for humans to do, but they are still just machines. I used to long for life in the 1920's but as I got older and I studied the 1920's I realized that they weren't that great, and I began to long for the 19th century and then I read Thoreau and longed for times even earlier, pre industrial revolution.

I realized that what happened in the industrial revolution was just a precursor to today. The beginning of the disconnect that is making itself evident in my generation. Technology used to evolve over centuries, and society had time to evaluate the good and the bad of new technologies. That is not the case anymore, it just comes at us too fast, ever changing, never content, ever improving, never perfect.

I long for the good old days. Days when life was short, and brutish, but at least it was real. People used to live in communities, tribes, cities, nations that were based on real person to person contact. Those are the days I miss.

Technology is great but what good is it if it takes our humanity away? What good is it if it robes us of human contact, and real physical near-distance communication.

What I absolutely hate about this hyper connected, but still lonely existence we call modern living is the total and complete lack of privacy, secrecy and personal rights. It used to be, before the twentieth century that biggest intrusion into your personal life was the town gossip. Now the government, Big brother, corporations, your employers, and random strangers all know what your up to. That GPS, while great if you don't have a map can also track you. That Email you sent out bashing your boss could come back to haunt you. There is no privacy, only the illusion of privacy, and forget about rights to secrecy. They know what your up to and that just sucks!

I long for the days before the microchip, before the transistor, before trains, planes, or automobiles, before Gasoline, or steam, or even steel, before police(yes, there was a time), before Shire reeves, and kings, and czars, and dukes before all of that. You see because, while life was short and brutish back in those days, life was pure, you knew your purpose, you only had a few options, only a few possessions, you were free to do as you pleased as long as you fed, clothed, and housed your family. If indeed you had a family at all.

There are only a few jobs in the world that I want, and sadly all of them have been taken, long ago, and been made completely obsolete. I don't want to be an inventor any more, I see that technology doesn't solve problems it only magnifies, or creates new ones. I don't want to be involved in this modern life.

No, the life I want to live and the people I look up to are the adventurers, the explorers, the traders that journeyed across vast distances of the globe, over the alps or through deserts carrying that little trinket from a distant culture. That real tangible item, made, or found, or grown by a real human being from another place. Or the messenger, traveling across vast distances to deliver an important message, to foster communication, person to person, the Telecommunication of old.

Those are the people I look up to, those are the people I want to be like. It is the reason I am an athlete, so that I can do what those ancient people did. Move through God's magnificent creation, exploring, learning, and communicating with people all over the world. That is what life should be about, this technology is just a dangerous distraction forcing us to give up our very humanity for sake of the machine.

I wish I could give up this glorified type writer for real society but, if I did that I would have no society, no community, no people, so for now I'll keep typing, and continuing to be just another slave to the machine.