Friday, June 10, 2011

Technology is, well what is it?









We seldom think about it but most technology is all about moving away from scarcity

Technology seeks to provide ways of alleviating bottlenecks and short falls

Technology tries to overcome nature by providing alternatives

Providing other ways of achieving a solution

Unfortunately it is often an unrealised promise

As the problem keeps growing and unfolding requiring ever more technological effort

A technological promise even when realised is frequently overrun by new problems that the solution has now exposed

Problems totally unforeseen and now needing more money and attention before the cycle starts again

Take modern conveniences, all designed to save time and effort

True many of them do individually save time and effort

However collectively they keep us running all day long to pay for them

So what did we really gain?

Technology also removes us from each other as most are ways of replacing the human interface we had with technicians and trades people


Technology is also central to our increasing separation from each other


Ever thought about it


The industrial revolution created accurate time to get the workers into the factories


Workers who moved from their villages to urban squalor, breaking centuries of relationships and community


Towns grew rapidly  during this period and people recreated relationships with neighbours


Until


Along comes the radio people tend to listen to this alone = less time with neighbours

TV = less time with neighbours


Car = less time at home, more time alone


Computers = more time alone


Mobile phones = private portable world communicating with distant others


Yet technology still claims that it can solve our problems


Only in providing devices and communications it can


Technology cannot cure our increasing separation from each other


Technology is the unseen menace that is changing humanity at a breathtaking speed


A menace in the sense that it creates and exposes endless new problems 


A world where we are are all separated from each other is not what we are here for


We are here to interact and nurture our planet back to health


And to do that we need to reconnect with each other


To spend time with each other not some machine pretending to offer solutions


Wake up to what it can be to be human


Personal, physical interactions


Time with each other


Yes time


The time you currently give to all your devices


The time you use promising others that you will one day meet...............


Nuf said?

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