Technology Field - is it Needed?

[Einsman Schlegel]

As a serious thought process of mine has proceeded, I've begun the thought process, of the technology field in the real world. 

I've held several jobs in the real world which required use of technology and some much more advanced than what Second Life has to offer.  As I realize as i've had engaged in the use of technology for most of my life, in the real world.. I question the use of it.  The future is probably what technology has to offer, but I've come in contact with many, who hadn't really had the need, or had use of it in the real world or feel the need for it. 

As we get further and further along, what do you people think of this?

Einsman.

 

[Rocky Pickles]

Technology can indeed be intrusive.. Not many would take a lap top into their bedroom.. If they wish to remain in their current partnership :-)

Advances in medicine prolong a good quality of life for many people.. Not all change is bad.

 

Change for the sake of change is often less than useful.. Fashion is for the foolish.. If it works.. Use it.

[Parhelion Palou]

What technology would you get rid of? Computing? Telecommunications? Agricultural? Medical? Transportation? Clothmaking? Candlemaking? As we learn more our technologies get more complex. From all I've read, I'd say we ain't seen nothin' yet.

For all humanity's advances, we still don't have warp drives. That's a technology I'd love to see.

 

[wiked Anton]

technology hasn't really brought us much when you think about it. sure, we can zip from one side of the earth to the other, but the people doing this arent benefiting the world, they are either doing it to holiday, or to make money for themselves or the employers. and medicine may have given us prolonged life, but now we are threatened with global population explosions and many of the poorest are starving. there is only so much viable farm land, and as the population grows, these areas are diminished. Land cleared for population gets the top soil blown away ( as it was protectect by trees) which dries up, leaving less humidity and evaporation and thereby changing climatic cycles, and turning the earea to dry waste lands. Without technology, we would still be living simple lives, with less population, no polution, more food to go around, climate change would be ...........? so really? technology has solved some problems, while causing so many more.........

[Peggy Paperdoll]

Technology is both the savior of mankind and the destruction of mankind.  Without the technology of how to walk the human race would be on par with that oak tree in the forest.  Then the technology of travel has caused the human race to use resources to get from one place to another that is threatening the very existance of life on this planet.  It's what you do with technology that makes it good or bad. 

 

The good part is that the human race is determined to survive.........for every technology that we screw up we find another to right it.  Makes life interesting.

[Peggy Paperdoll]

But technology can actually fix that population thing.  There's no reason the populations of the world have to reside on forested parts of the globe except for convenience.  Look at the United States alone..........the population of the entire country is on less than 10% of the continent.   It's how technology is used that makes it useful...........and most of the technology is wasted on useless things (sold to us as necessary.......most is not).  Take text messaging..........that is a step backward in the communication technology.

[Angelique LaFollette]

Submitted for your appraisal without comment

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neo-Luddism

 

Angel.

[Ishtara Rothschild]

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wiked Anton wrote:

technology hasn't really brought us much when you think about it. 

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:matte-motes-bored:

If that's what you think, you probably haven't put a lot of thought into it. Perhaps this will help: 



Life expectancy over the centuries
Neolithic Era	20 years
Bronze Age	26 years
Classical Greece / Rome	28 years
Medieval Europe	30 years
Early 20th Century	31 years
Current world average	67 years
First World average	79 years

 

(Source 1 / Source 2)

Water treatment plants alone have probably added 20 years to our life expectancy. The rest of this enormous increase in life span and overall health comes down to modern medicine, proper sanitation, central heating, and the abundance of healthy food all year round due to modern transportation and refrigeration. All of this is the result of technological progress.

Can you even imagine a world without refrigeration, where meat spoils within a single day? Can you imagine not being able to get any fruit and vegetables during the winter months unless you've made preserves during the summer (which is also a form of technology)? Or try to imagine a world without toilets and showers. Even if you only go back 30 years to a time without cellphones... imagine somebody has a heart attack in the streets and none of the bystanders is able to call an ambulance unless there happens to be a phone booth nearby. Technology greatly enhances our natural abilities. You could say that it gives us super powers

[Phil Deakins]

It's true that technology isn't needed. After all, the world of humans managed without it for thousands of years. But, in managing without it, they were more likely to die long before we do today, and they had much harder and poorer lives than we have today.

Yesterday, while watching my 42" TV (and I have a 50" in another room), I thought (again) that we are living in wonderful times compared to what's gone before. I also thought that we have only seen the start of it, and I wished that I would be around for the wonders that are to come, but I won't be*. So whilst technology isn't needed, it's a fantastic boon to humankind. So much so, that I'd hate to live in a world without its benefits and pleasures.

*Note: I should mention that I'm not about to depart this world in the near future - not that I know of, anyway. But I won't be around in 50 or 100 years time to see, and enjoy, the wonders that continued technology development will bring.

[Phil Deakins]

Those average life expectency numbers are astonishing! I'd heard that the average male lifespan in my city, at the start of the 20th century, was 28, but I'd thought it was due to the hardness of working in an industrialised city. I'd no idea that 30 was the norm at that time.

[Ishtara Rothschild]

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Phil Deakins wrote:

It's true that technology isn't needed. After all, the world of humans managed without it for thousands of years.

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Technology is every form of tool use or craft. The use of fire is technology. Clothing is technology. Primitive stone tools are technology, and a wooden spear is a primitive weapon technology.

There was no point in human history where humans have not used technology. Homo habilis already used stone tools and made fire. Homo Erectus hunted with the help of spears and pit falls, invented clothing, and carried water around in gourds. The first Homo sapiens was born into a world where technology was extensively used in every area of life. Without it, our species couldn't possibly have survived.

[Phil Deakins]

Let's not get picky, shall we?

[Ishtara Rothschild]

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Phil Deakins wrote:

Those average life expectency numbers are astonishing! I'd heard that the average male lifespan in my city, at the start of the 20th century, was 28, but I'd thought it was due to the hardness of working in an industrialised city. I'd no idea that 30 was the norm at that time.

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Of course hard work factored into it. And in prehistoric times, the main causes of death were probably violence such as wars and blood feuds, hunting accidents, diseases and infections. Very few, if any, people died what we've come to think of as a natural death. But quality of sanitation, availability of healthy food, medicine and clean water also plays a huge role.   

[Ishtara Rothschild]

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Phil Deakins wrote:

Let's not get picky, shall we?

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I'm just pointing out that the word technology is often misused nowadays. It's not just electric tools and machinery. Technology is everything that is somehow manufactured and doesn't naturally occur.

[Phil Deakins]

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Ishtara Rothschild wrote:

I'm just pointing out that the word technology is often misused nowadays. It's not just electric tools and machinery. Technology is everything that is somehow manufactured and doesn't naturally occur.

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That may be so, but I think that the OP means something a little different to that - what we generally think of as technology.

I'd also like to point something out. Words, and the definitions of words, are for man - not the other way round. So, if a word that meant one thing in the past, comes to mean something a little different in the future, then the current meaning is the correct one, although the past meaning may also still be a correct one. So let's not get picky, shall we?

[Ishtara Rothschild]

But that is the common and current definition of the word technology. You won't find a different definition of this term in any dictionary or book. Have you never heard people speak of bronze age technology, medieval technology, or the technology of the pyramid builders? If the OP only meant information technology, electric technology or automobile technology, he should have said so. 

 

ETA: If you define technology as something more recent, when did it begin and what was the first piece of tech? The printing press? The first industrial loom? The steam engine, the first automobile, the electric light bulb, or the first computer chip? It's impossible to draw a line there, imho. If you make electricity a precondition, a handgun is no longer a piece of weapon technology.

[Phil Deakins]

The point is that it's clear what the OP meant by the word "technology".

Incidentally, dictionaries follow people's use of words - not the other way round.

Many words have different uses and many older uses remain in the dictionary. These days, we don't tend to think of technology as being things like fire, sticks, etc., regardless of older descriptions that remain in dictionaries. Personally, I dislike it when the word "technology" is used for things like computer programmes; i.e. programmes that use the same programming languages that other programmes use but the programme does something a little different to other similar progarmmes, therefore it's our technology - but it gets used for that too. In this case, I am sure that the OP meant technical things and not things like fire and clothes. So stop being picky.

[Void Singer]

to answer the titular question, Yes it is needed.

if there is ever to be hope of our survival as a species in the long run, technology is the answer. period, full stop, end of line.

[Ishtara Rothschild]

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Phil Deakins wrote:

These days, we don't tend to think of technology as being things like fire, sticks, etc., regardless of older descriptions that remain in dictionaries. 

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Who is this "we" that you're talking of? Technology has a clearly defined meaning, and that meaning does not change when old technology replaces new technology. Archaeologists, historians and anthropologists are not going to stop using this word in a historical context. You might as well try to redefine clothing as a word that only refers to modern day fashion. 

The problem is not that people use the word differently nowadays, it is that they are not concise enough when expressing themselves. "Modern technology" is still a pretty vague term, but it already helps to narrow things down a bit. "Information technology" would be even more concise. 

 

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 In this case, I am sure that the OP meant technical things and not things like fire and clothes. 

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"Technical thing" is equally vague. Was Gutenberg's printing press not something technical?

 

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 So stop being picky.

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Sorry, no can do But I can agree to disagree and leave it at that.

 

 

 

[Madelaine McMasters]

Einsman, I think you are expressing a frustration with those technologies that are most apparent to you, either because they are still crude or are poorly designed. I'm simultaneously a technologist and a closet Luddite (one who shuns technology). I design complex medical instruments but don't own a TV. I get frustrated several times a year when my 90 year old neighbor calls  to say "Maddy, my TV is yelling at me in Spanish again, make it stop!". If I'd ever owned a VCR, I'm sure it would have been flashing "12:00".

These technologies will stop frustrating us as they improve or are displaced, but those frustrations are nothing compared to advances we've made since wielding our first club (which, as Ishy points out, was a technological advance). If you want to know what life would be like without technology, look at wild animals. There are a few crude tool users in that lot, but nothing like us.

Some will point out that millions of people are suffering on this planet every day, some as the result of technology. But as a percentage of the whole, and in absolute terms (lifespan), suffering has been on the decline for a very long time, and that decline in suffering has correlated very strongly with the rise of technology. That is not an accident. While locally (both in time and location) you may not see it, we are making progress.

I share your frustration over bad design and misapplication, but I'm so very thankful for technology. Without it we'd not be here to complain.

[Phil Deakins]

Oh, stop waffling, Ishtara. If the OP's question left you confused because you can't see past a dictionary definition, and understand what was meant, then I'm sorry. Perhaps next time might be easier for you

[Venus Petrov]

I enjoy threads that are pushed and stretched sometimes beyond what the OP may have intended.  Ishtara is an intelligent poster and I enjoy reading her.  Why limit discussion to what the OP may have intended?  It would be a very boring thread if all of the posts were of the type:

1) Yes, I agree.

2) No, I disagree (and perhaps why).

3) Wut?

Broaden our view of technologies as they relate to us and we see how changes in the way we live are all driven by creation, adoption, and modification of 'technologies'.

[Void Singer]

I believe the crux of Ishtara's meaning (and I happen to agree) is "say what you mean".

anyone that knows the word "technology" but doesn't know it applies to a bow and arrow, hasn't been paying attention.

 

the ability to create and imrpove upon technology is our niche, and it defines us. without it, as a species, humans are subject to extinction in short order

[PeterCanessa Oh]

No, technology isn't needed, neither are things like food, shelter, warmth and even that silly breathing idea.  There would be no human pollution if we all just died out - and what could be simpler than that.  Of course bears would still **bleep** in the woods, but that's not pollution because it's "natural".

Hmmm, of course, we'd have to kill-off all the primates, weaver birds, and any other tool-users if we really wanted to end technology.  Plus you'd need to make sure some other species didn't start using pointy sticks ... er, sticks at all.  Or rocks.  Hunting in packs is probably a bit dangerous.  Let's just kill all life and sterilise the planet so nothing can re-evolve.  Which still leaves panspermian concerns, but there's no need to be extreme (!).

In the long run (as iterated from now) those 'technologies' that confer an evolutionary advantage will tend to spread, those that are a liability will tend to die out.  What is your definition not only of 'rechnology' but also of 'needed'?