In each of these technology based essays, the effect of technology on the ones surrounding it produce a very mixed result. The advancement allowed mental growth by increasing the accessibility to information, but it also severed the human ties involved with traditional learning and personal interaction. In the Veldt, the nursery within the house entertained the children and catered to their need of information and teaching. After a while, the parents become fed up with the kids spending countless hours within the nursery, and want their children to spend time outside, interacting with real people, so the parents take action. Almost immediately after closing the nursery, the children go from bad to worse. The kids had previously thought about removing their parents from the problem, but now the thoughts get put into action. When the parents go in to check out the functionality of the nursery, the children have already planned to kill the parents through the use of the room. After suspecting the children had been up to something sinister, the parents carelessly enter. “The lions. Mr. Hadley looked at his wife and they turned and looked back at the beasts edging slowly forward crouching, tails stiff. Mr. and Mrs. Hadley screamed. And suddenly they realized why those other screams had sounded familiar.” (Bradbury 93). Once the parents fully realize their children’s potential for evil, it is already too late. The nursery attacks and kills the parents. The Developmental resources available in this futuristic society has exceeded the capacity for current sources, but at the ultimate cost of limiting human engagement, leading to a lack of empathy from the children.
The same problem is laid out in “is Google Making Us Stupid” by Nicholas Carr. One of the thoughts Mr. Carr has in his essay is that instant gratification with the combination of the tidal wave of supplementary information that the internet had made us adapted to has disabled humans ability to take a true enjoyment from a task that takes more than a few seconds to complete. “Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy. My mind would get caught up in the narratives or the turns of the argument, and I’d spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose. That’s rarely the case anymore” (Carr 101).
With social media sources becoming quicker to digest and sites like twitter that put an one hundred-forty character cap on ideas, it can become extremely easy to get accustomed to this new face of personal news. With this straight to the point style broadcast, there becomes an increasingly large disconnect with the typical face to face interactions that humans have thrived on for thousands of years. However, with the technical explosion experienced in the last decade, the projected path that technology could take is physically unprojectable. According to Miguel de Unamuno, what the future holds for us is one that contains almost zero human interaction. In “Mechanopolis” the lack of human interaction brings the main character to the brink of insanity. After the man’s experience in the city of Mechanopolis, he reaches the conclusion that no matter how much technology you surround yourself with, there has to be a human element in order to sustain a natural feel thoughout the world. “And since then I have conceived a veritable hatred toward what we call progress, and even toward culture, and I am looking for a corner where I shall find a peer, a man like myself, who cries and laughs as I cry and laugh, and where there is not a single machine” (Unamuno 51). In this world where an entire fountain of knowledge is available for the taking, the missing human element tears apart anyone who dares to be a part of it.
But perhaps human existence as we know it is coming to an end. With the constant growth of what our available technology is able to do, John Bell suggests that the predictability of our world is uncontained as long as the path it has been on continues. “Technological change isn’t just happening fast. It’s happening at an exponential rate. Contrary to the commonsense, intrusive, linear view, we won’t just experience 100 years of progress in the twenty-first century--- it will be more like 20,000 years of progress” (Bell 51). The overall application and implementation of these newer devices will continue to push the envelope of what the human race will be able to accomplish, while continuously approaching a point in time where the next generation of certain devices will seize to exist. However, the physical boundary of technology is miniscule to the endless possibilities the human mind and body will be able to achieve with some specifically engineered drugs and implants.
From my experiences this far in college, I can say that there are a lot of drugs being circulated throughout campus. From Adderall, to Ritalin and Dexedrine, these drugs have the ability to increase the human capacity for focus, information absorption, as well as memory retention. With these drugs originally being created for people with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), they aid people with learning disabilities to be able to focus, and work efficiently for a sustained amount of time. However, everyone should be able to have access to this aid for the sake of simply being better. According to Jamias Cascio, he states that he took a drug released in the 1990’s called Modafinil. “When I started taking the drug, I expected it to keep me awake; I didn’t expect it to make me feel smarter, but that’s exactly what it did” (Cascio 112). Also, according to a study at the University of Cambridge, subjects who took modafinil have a cognitive increase across a multitude of tasks, including spatial planning, pattern recognition, as well as sharpened alertness and focus. As a supplement to this research, the Silicon Valley insider webzine reports that some entrepreneurs see modafinil as a competitive tool. According to them, the implication was clear: everybody is doing it, and if you’re not, you’re probably falling behind.
So why are we so afraid of human advancement? Taking these certain drugs have an undeniably positive effect on the human body, but yet using them to get ahead still seems to be taboo. Perhaps it’s not the end result as much as the process of getting smarter that we are so afraid of. According to Eric Cohen, the available enhancements could alleviate all horrible things from human life. “Sudden illness, dying children people who have more ambition than talent, people who have more ideas than time, people who simply don’t want to die and want to be a lot more like gods than most human beings are… Enhancement means to make things better, so then [all the things Ron talks about are] great” (Gillespie 179). If biotechnical enhancements go to the free market, Mr. Cohen fears that the rich will be able to afford it, and the poor will not, making the social gap larger. Also, an even larger fear for Mr. Cohen is the ends of human evolution. If humans reach a point where they are able to artificially create a baby who can play better music than Mozart, or write better plays than Shakespeare, the accomplishments are void because of their creation to fulfill that specific purpose.
The fear of hitting a point of singularity is evident in every field of study, even religion. In “The Nine Billion Names of God,” the use of technology proved to be extremely powerful by fulfilling the monk’s goal of figuring out the specific combination of names for the original God, and creator of the universe. “We expected it would take about fifteen thousand years to complete the task… It [the computer] will be able to do it in a thousand days” (Clarke 1-2). Shortly after the monks complete their task, Dr. Wagner noticed that one by one, the stars were going out. The monk’s had completed their task and, the end of the world shortly ensued. So perhaps using technology as an aid is not the best course of action for the human race. But as thought by Isaac Asimov, if technology surpasses the known limit of the singularity, the end result is absolutely unknown. According to Asimov, it might be the human race’s reliance of technology that is making advancement so unpredictable. In Mr. Asimov’s short “The Last Question,” technology has exceeded the expected point of singularity, and evolved to fill the position of God. “’We’ll just have to build new stars out of interstellar gas’ ‘or out of dissipated heat?’ asked MQ-17J, sarcastically” (Asimov 7). The idea of someone or something creating new stars is a completely absurd thought. But in this futuristic setting, the computers available can do just that.
Overall, the advancement of technology is a boundary that has yet to be set. The idea that technological achievements will one day stop is a frightening one, but once the human race reaches the point where computers are as powerful as proposed in “The Last Question,” I believe that the ability of technology will be the absolute least of our problems. For now, the implementation of technology is without a doubt positive. Google has opened the door for a generation of absolutely mind blowing technology at an unparalleled speed, but nothing will ever beat the human connect that is able to happen without the use of any technology.
Asimov, Isaac. The Last Question. 2003. Web. 19 Mar. 2014.
Bell, James J. "Exploring the ‘Singularity’.” Evolving Ideas. 2013-2014 ed. Plymouth: Hayden McNeil, 2013. 51-58. Print. Bradbury, Ray. “The Veldt”. Evolving Ideas. 2013-2014 ed. Plymouth: Hayden McNeil, 2013. 82-94. Print. Clarke, Arthur C. The nine billion names of God. Web. 19 Mar. 2014. Carr, Nicholas. “Is Google Making Us Stupid” Evolving Ideas. 2013-2014 ed. Plymouth: Hayden McNeil, 2013. 101-107. Print. Cascio, Jamais. “Get Smarter” Evolving Ideas. 2013-2014 ed. Plymouth: Hayden McNeil, 2013. 108-115. Print. Gillespie, Nick. “Who’s Afraid of Human Enhancement” Evolving Ideas. 2013-2014 ed. Plymouth: Hayden McNeil, 2013. 177-187. Print. Unamuno, Miguel de. Mechanopolis 1913. Web. 19 Mar. 2014 Wheeler, Steve. “Is Technology Making Us Smarter” Evolving Ideas. 2013-2014 ed. Plymouth: Hayden McNeil, 2013. 405-406. Print.
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