It’s still very early. We’re still in the phase of expecting some even better technology to come along and save us from this problem. Programmers are creating “no procrastinate” options for their web sites in order to help users not spend so much time there. Programs are being written to track online time to show users where they are spending all of their energy. The new addictive program will eliminate the ills of the old one.
Meanwhile, people get fatter and fatter, unable to get around or physically accomplish normal chores from a 100 years ago. Intelligence is going down as fewer and fewer books are being read (news flash: the printed book industry is on the way out unless this trend stops), and social organizations like churches and civic clubs see fewer and fewer members attend their meetings. The skills that are increasing? Reflex time. Ability to solve abstract, short-timespan problems. Basically the skills we need to interact with our entertainment. More and more, Indians and Chinese — people coming from cultures who have been shut out of the technical world until recently — are writing software for hardcore western appetites to consume.
Now that sight and sound are covered, new internet appliances promise to offer touch, smell. Locomotion is old hat. Eventually there will be a direct brain interface. There has to be: competitors will become so strong that only by direct brain stimulation will technology be able to continue to evolve.
People say that this is a good thing — as technology evolves we will become trans-human: we will integrate in with machines and be able to process and work a thousand times faster than before.
This may be true. But if so, it would be a side-effect, not a direct result. That’s like saying it’d be great to get hit by a train because you’ve always wanted a train ride. The driver here is the competition between various pieces of technology and brain-time.Whatever controls the most brain-time wins out evolutionarily over any other product, not matter how valuable it might be. World of Warcraft beats Wikipedia hands down. That driver will continue. It’s foolish and pollyannish to think that somehow it’ll all work out. Unless the conditions for the evolving threat cease, it will keep growing and adapting, no matter how much better, stronger, and faster we are.
It’s all happening slowly, much slower than it did with heroin. We don’t have the time-intensive life we once did. Heroin was a simple substance that had immediate, clear effects; this is a process of adaptation and survival that is taking generations. Heroin hit you in the face and still it took 50 years for us to figure it out. This is slowly creeping up our leg and strangling our minds, our souls, millimeter by millimeter, year by year. By the time we figure this one out, it might be too late.
No matter what, it will once again change our definition of what it means to be human.
Excerpt from http://www.whattofix.com/blog/archives/2009/02/technology_is_h.php
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markwynerdesign reblogged this from strengththroughstruggle and added:
Wow—what a read. I’ve never heard...Daniel Markham but...man...
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