\u201cTechnology\u201d is the word of our era.\u00a0 We rarely read a newspaper, magazine or watch a newscast without being bombarded with the word.\u00a0 Future academics will probably refer to this period of earth\u2019s development as the \u2018Technologic Epoch.\u2019\u00a0 It will be identified by archaeologists as a thick band of plastic and other toxic waste clearly visible in the strata of the earth.<\/p>\n
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The philosophical controversy as to whether technology betters or worsens the human condition, intrigues me.\u00a0 There are any number of causes that favor a simple existence.\u00a0 Many of them are indicted, quite ignorantly, in the press as anti-technology.<\/p>\n
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It is not uncommon to hear the assertion that much of humanity is technophobic.\u00a0 Just because a culture embraces certain technologies and rejects others does not mean they prefer to live without technology.<\/p>\n
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The Amish come to mind.\u00a0 The height of modern technology, for them, is focused in the agrarian era.\u00a0 Despite their resistance to \u201cEnglish,\u201d ways, their hand tools, buggies, and construction techniques are the acme of pre-industrial technology.\u00a0 They have even improved their technologies with modern materials.\u00a0 We outsiders ignorantly label them technophobes; they have simply embraced a level of technology that suits them, and might well enable them to survive the rest of us.<\/p>\n
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Then there is the fringe.\u00a0 Take the example of Theodore Kaczynsky, a.k.a. the \u201cUnibomber.\u201d\u00a0 He railed against industrialism, modern technology, and God knows who and what else.\u00a0 Yet he embraced the highly technological manual typewriter to write his manifesto.\u00a0 He also developed his own sophisticated technology for making improvised anti-personnel explosive devices. Technological serial homicide in defiance of technology.\u00a0 He was a psychopath camouflaged as a technophobe.<\/p>\n
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Most of humanity craves the luxuries technology provides.\u00a0 Safe, fresh food; clean water; shelter; health care and medicine; efficient transportation; and entertainment.\u00a0 What\u2019s not to like?\u00a0 None the less, we go too far in our expectations and applications of technology.\u00a0 Two of humanity\u2019s primary attributes are addiction and excess.<\/p>\n
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Mankind developed an appetite for technology with the stone age.\u00a0 We define rudimentary intelligence as the ability to identify problems and make tools to solve those problems.\u00a0 The fact that new technologies often manifest themselves as weapons has added an evolutionary imperative to the equation.\u00a0 Cultures who embrace cutting edge technologies often use them first to make weapons.\u00a0 Stone slings, bronze and iron swords eventually evolved into nuclear weapons.<\/p>\n
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A healthy skepticism of technology is a good thing.\u00a0 We have all come to learn that there is a lot of \u2018bad science\u2019 asserted to sell us stuff or beliefs.\u00a0 Pure research is almost a thing of the past, if it ever existed.\u00a0 Universities depend on grants to fund research.\u00a0 We are bombarded with conflicting research conclusions.\u00a0 The health benefits of caffeine and coffee are a case in point.\u00a0 The coffee drinking public has developed whiplash trying to keep up with the latest academic verdict as to whether coffee is harmful or not.\u00a0 The public is not stupid.\u00a0 We have learned to ascertain who funded the study.<\/p>\n
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Big Pharma invested billions in cholesterol reducing drugs.\u00a0 After they found drugs to do the trick, they funded studies that concluded previously established cholesterol levels were too high.\u00a0 What was a normal level for an adult in the 1980\u2019s is now considered at risk of death or stroke if we do not medicate ourselves to levels unattainable without drugs.<\/p>\n
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What about the controversy over healthy food?\u00a0 Vitamins?\u00a0 Obesity?\u00a0 There are privately funded university studies that support damn near anything, as long as the money is there.\u00a0 How much money did the tobacco industry spend in the 20th century trying to convince us that smoking was not harmful?<\/p>\n
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Technology is not a deity, though we tend to regard it as such.\u00a0 It is a human endeavor and is subject to all of the fallibilities of human behavior.\u00a0 We should assess it with healthy level of skepticism as we embrace our personal computers, tablets, and smart phones.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cTechnology\u201d is the word of our era.\u00a0 We rarely read a newspaper, magazine or watch a newscast without being bombarded with the word.\u00a0 Future academics will probably refer to this period of earth\u2019s development as the \u2018Technologic Epoch.\u2019\u00a0 It will be identified by archaeologists as a thick band of plastic and other toxic waste clearly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-99","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/tagesuppe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/tagesuppe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/tagesuppe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tagesuppe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tagesuppe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=99"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/tagesuppe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":125,"href":"http:\/\/tagesuppe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99\/revisions\/125"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/tagesuppe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=99"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tagesuppe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=99"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tagesuppe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=99"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}