Is anyone scared about the evolutionary implications of our increasing dependence on technology? Do you think life was better before computers and cell phones?
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Moved from GQ to IMHO.
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I personally don’t mind computers and cell phones, but our dependence on fossil fuels and associated technology scares me sometimes.
Yes, life was much better when selective pressure was allowed to mercilessly cull the weak and inadequate, when contagion regularly decimated regional populations due to poor sanitation and preventative medical care, when people were limited in knowledge to only what they could personally experience, and fluffy pink mastadons roamed the earth, pooping great piles of rainbow sherbert.
Stranger
There’s always a tradeoff. Writing made people worry that no one would remember anything anymore (like entire epics), and sure enough that’s pretty true.
My attention span is quite a bit shorter than it used to be, which probably isn’t all that great, but it just means I need to practice. Otherwise I’m a fan of cell phones and the Internet.
No, and no.
Better because of computers, worse because of cell phones
I was just reading this article about the study of how the internet affects memory.
Let me sum up - if we know that information is stored somewhere - even when we try and remember it’s more difficult. If we know the information is not easily retrievable memory works as it used to.
For the bits of information we don’t remember we do remember how to access it.
I think this is a good thing. We’ve forgotten skills that we no longer need in order to make space for the ones we do.
A friend of mine and his wife are trying to have a baby. He has told me that they aren’t going to resort to fertility treatment: his feeling is that if they’re unable to get pregnant naturally, that’s not a trait they want to pass on to their offspring.
I suppose this means they might adopt.
Pointy stick make Thag children lazy! Sit around all day stare cave wall. Better in old day.
Probably one of Roosevelt’s least successful Hundred-Days initiatives.
Yes, many people are, and many people have been, concerned for a very long time. My Google-fu is weak today, but if you poke around on the 'net you can find more information about the history of folks being very concerned about society’s increasing dependence on technology.
Or, you can consult your local librarian. Gasp! How backward and low-tech can you get? “Wazzatmatta, Toucanna, you some kinda Luddite? Or Amish, maybe?” 
Regards,
Sent from my TRS-80 through CompuServe. (I found my new sig line!)
As long as Skynet or Cyberdyne Systems isn’t about to do an IPO, we’re probably all okay.
You will be assimilated, resistance is futile
There is a genetic NEED to worry about Armageddon…I don’t think we’ll be emp’d back into the stone age,I don’t think there’s anything to worry about, and expect things will just continually get better, with the occasional sociological side-effect.
Technology advances so much faster than biological selection (at least in humans with their ~25 year generations) that we won’t have a clear idea of where we’re going for some time yet. Remember the “giant brain” cliche of science ficiton? It’s more or less directly descended from the Wells novel First Men in the Moon, where the Selenites were supposed to be an example of the end product of civilization: a master brain controling a race of drones. Or The Time Machine’s postulating the 19th century’s class divisions enduring for 800,000 years, yielding the Eloi and the Morlocks.
More recently, people have worried that medical science would produce people unable to breed naturally, or being totally dependent on advanced medicine for their survival. Now it looks like we’ll have genetic engineering before that happens.
I’ve been speculating about the long-term selective effect of advanced weapons on humanity. Up to around 1850 or so, the kind of crazy, magnificent, raw physical courage that enabled our ancestors to kill lions and bears with sharp sticks made evolutionary sense. Then we got the Colt revolver, the Maxim machine gun, and nukes; weapons against which crazy-brave courage is counter to survival.
Two questions. Scared? No not really.
Do I think life was better before Internet, etc? That’s a more complex answer. Sometimes I would prefer not to stay connected to some people.
“The human was impervious to our most powerful magnetic fields, yet in the end he succumbed to a harmless sharpened stick.”
I’m the Chief Security Officer for my work. One of the major efforts last year was making the various business units pony up for Blackberries for the people that really needed to be reached. It had the benefit of keeping people’s personal and business data seperate, but it also made the business evaluate who REALLY needed to be reached off hours.
It also had the neat side effect of letting me leave the office behind once in awhile.
This summer’s week long vacation was the first one in a decade where I really disconnected from the office.
Like anything else, I think we will learn that 7x25x365 access is a two edges sword that needs management, or we’ll burn out on it.
Yes, and yes.
Despite Stranger’s hyperbolic answer, I think there was a point during the last century when medical science advanced to a point where people (well, western people with access to such technologies) could expect live full and healthy lives, for the most part. We can still improve on life-saving treatments and technologies, but start to see diminishing returns.
I’ve had a cell phone for 6 or 7 years. It didn’t make my life any ‘better’, except that no one makes plans and sticks with them throughout the day any more, because everyone expects everyone else to be reachable within 15 minutes or so at all hours of the day, so I ‘need’ a cell phone only to keep the same level of relationship and contact with friends that I did before they all had cell phones.
Basically, technology was perfect when I was a kid. Stay off my lawn!
love the Internet, hate cell phones. I grew up in an era when, if you were caught with a calculator in math class it was an automatic F…but the Internet is like being let loose in the Smithsonian overnight…