. . . and it might not take as long as you might think. Nope, the wheels of time are spinning more rapidly than ever now, and with each turn of the wheel, we get less relevant, less useful, less of a factor. No way, you say? We still hold the reins because we're the inventors, the makers of al this wonderful technology. Think of it this way, if it makes more sense to you. We invented the car, the gun, the airplane, the bomb, and all kinds of things that were supposed to be solutions. If we could travel about, we could get more done. And we do get more done with cars and airplanes, but we pay a big price for it. Cars have killed more people than all the wars we've fought, and for the sake of convenience. Inventions of destruction like bombs and tanks and such? Well, that's easy to figure out. These things in one way or another have made life better for most of us, but they've also put an end to lots of us too.
And then there's the computer and other electronic gizmos that now dominate our lifestyles. What are they doing to us? Schools are giving up, no longer try to teach kids to write. The average product of our school system now can write very little because he has no need for it. All they need to know is how to peck out words on some keyboard. They don't read well, especially if they're required to read from a written page. It's all digitalized now, and even though that invention has made us better in lots of ways, it has also killed off something no computer can ever replace - a human being who capable of critical thinking. Watching television or staring at a computer screen doesn't take much brain power, especially when the gizmo you're using does all the work for you. The time is coming when actual hand held magazines, newspapers, and books will be a thing of the past. Fifty years from now, perhaps sooner, nobody will be reading books in book form. And whether or not you want to see it as a death sentence, it is. Oh, we'll continue living as blobs of living matter that can research almost anything in the blink of an eye, or the flick of a finger, but we'll be cripples . . . thought deprived cripples. Alive, yes, but brain dead for all practical purposes.
This has been happening at a rather slow pace for some time, but modern technology has even made time less relevant. It takes much less time these days to do most things than it did just ten years ago. Compare that to a century ago, and the differences are staggering. The amount of information known to man increases at a fast rate now. When I was born, it took something like 30 years for the amount of information known to us to double. Now it doubles much faster, so fast, in fact, that it's impossible for a human being to keep up with it. We're not smart enough to absorb all the information that bombards us constantly, but there's no need to worry about it. The machines know, and if we need to know, then we can ask them. Just punch a button or two, and they'll tell us. So, do you think you're still as relevant as were your parents or grandparents? Not hardly.
No comments:
Post a Comment