If I knew then.....

[hyphenate]

I am in awe. completely, and unforgettably in awe. You see, we live in a time when there is something miraculous every day of the week, even faster. We have our heads filled with so many new things, new technology, new gizmos, new ideas that it becomes next to impossible to remember it all.

But somehow we do manage, because it becomes urgent at some point to keep up the pace, and accept the changes as philosophically as we can.

I wonder....what people would have thought a hundred years ago if even a minute portion of what we take for granted today was present then.

Jack the Ripper--foiled through forensic science;
The miracle of space flight in a time dominated by dirigibles and hot air ballooning;
Deep sea divers--more real than the stories of H.G. Wells and Jules Verne;
Instantaneous communication across the world, regardless of your original location;
Digital photography, quicker, easier and less bogged down with camera equipment;
Modern medicine--a doctor back then would have scoffed at heart transplants, operating rooms, sterile conditions;
Personal computers--whoa: that one will cause the "vapors" in anyone!


I have in my iGoogle page a gadget for looking at webcams around the world. Many of the images seem to emanate from Europe, and seeing as it's night here, it's only natural to remember that most of Europe is also dark for the same reason. And then a brightly lit-up image is sent from Italy--an image that appears to be of traffic. Marina di Torre Vado in Puglia--Torre Vado, Italy is certainly not dark!

And then it strikes me, as it has done so for quite a few years now, that the world is never far away anymore. How in times gone by, letters and packaging, and other very slow forms of communications could delay "news" for months and more. How even the most patient person could go stark raving mad without hearing from someone.

We have grown accustomed to the frenzy of lives in the beginning of the new millennia. We have, sometimes, become slaves to the newest technologies, but only until we have mastered them. And mastering them means having enough knowledge to understand their basic design, and implementing that knowledge. I'm old enough to remember the absolute fear that computers wrought in the middle of the 20th century: how people were going to lose their jobs to computers, how computers could and world replace people in every facet of their lives, and how non-personal life was going to get. But it didn't happen. People instead found the opposite true--with microchips, the computers didn't need to fill a whole room, or weigh a ton. Instead, computers became personal, and became assets for both work and home computing, and brought people from all over the world together in ways that still can cause jaws to drop and realize all over again that we live in an amazing world.

What will it be like a hundred years from now? Do we even dare to consider how far ahead we will be by then? Someone I knew once said that we are progressing exponentially in technology--every twenty-five years, our knowledge doubles, he said. And I have to give him that, because even though he's not with us here now, he would likely have just nodded and smiled.

[waiting for hope]

1. I just hope that when the aliens do land

and wave a hello at us, we will be a more mature race of people. :applause: Great post hyphenate - a lot of food for thought. :)

[waiting for hope]

2. Kick

[Juche]

3. Knowledge grows exponentially every 1-15 years

Depending on the field. I think medicine doubles every 7 years. A new field like nanotech doubles every couple years, an old field like chemistry takes about 15 years.

But suffice it to say, after 4 doublings you are looking at 1600% more knowledge. According to Kurzweil every decade has 2x as much tech and science productivity as the last. So the 2nd decade (2010-2020) will have 8x more productivity than the 1980s.

Read this article. There is something called 'the singularity' which is supposedly when knowledge growth starts to occur so rapidly (brought on by AI who are not limited to biological intelligence or creativity) that it basically destroys all existing rules of life. The singularity, if it occurs, is supposed to occur around 2040.

http://www.kurzweilai.net/articles/art0134.html?printable=1

[EndersDame]

4. I read that most cell phones have more computing power than all the computers at NASA in 60s

[tomreedtoon]

5. And this comforts you?

Remember what it said in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy about the Babel Fish? The near-magical telepathic translator of all kinds of language? "Meanwhile, the poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different races and cultures, has caused more and bloodier wars than anything else in the history of creation."

Greater understanding means greater hatred. Greater communication means greater knowledge of how other people, countries and religions can really offend us. And the people who control those channels of communication can fan our hatred of others.

Greater communication has resulted in nothing more than the fanning of xenophobia and violence. Imagine how we'll hate each other with a hundred years of progress!

ON EDIT: You need examples? How many more gays and lesbians have been killed since we first became publicly aware of them? In the early 1960's they didn't exist in the public consciousness. Now that people know who and what they are, they are killed with abandon all across America.

The enormous power of local television news is concentrated on telling us what criminals (preferably non-white ones 'cause they're scarier) have raped or killed people in our community. "Staying informed" means "staying terrified." We get upset stomachs when we open our front doors and step out into the streets filled with people, pandemics and defective cars that are out to kill us.

In a century, the same fearmongers will be able to beam their mind-control paranoia straight into our brains, Babel fish style. Our current time of economic and social collapse will be referred to as "the good old days."

[hyphenate]

6. The examples you made are scary ones, indeed

but they are in the socio-economic arena, as opposed to the technological level.

And yes, we must face the fact that there are quite a few people who will keep their xenophobic views and intolerance even into the future.

The United States have always had people who defy the greater good, and show unparalleled hatred and malevolence toward others. Hatred, it appears, breeds pretty much the same, no matter what era they live in. We have spawned the haters themselves, when people like Pat Robertson, Charles Manson and Fred Phelps can defend their own twisted and criminal views without being jailed for it.

But we live in a country that was founded under the principle that we can speak freely because it's one of the highlights of our constitution--the first amendment: freedom of speech, freedom to worship (or not) as we want, and not be persecuted. The amendment remains intact, and since we ourselves would abhor losing that right, so it goes that there are polemic views which should also be given that same treatment.

It might not be easy for us to relent on that, but they look at it the same--they would like our voices quashed as well, but because the law of the land allows that freedom of speech be a given, we're allowed to speak as we please, also.

[tomreedtoon]

7. Hyphenate, those were "suggestions," not principles.

People stick to principles. These things you suggested are usually discarded at the first moment they become inconvenient. There is no freedom to worship, or not, in Falwell country, nor is there freedom of speech or freedom from persecution. And they're things we certainly didn't bring to Iraq or encourage there.

You wouldn't happen to be a civics teacher from the 1960's, would you? Civics is no longer taught in secondary schools. Like home economics and shop, it was discarded as unnecessary. I'd go far enough to say that civics no longer exists in the United States.