Something tell me that our dependence on technology and adaptation on that will end up being our downfall.
The fun thing is that, some point in the far distant past, someone probably communicated that same idea in regards to pointed sticks. Pretty sure I actually recall more or less the same concept in relation to the written word, from stuff transmitted from grecian times.
... seriously though, we haven't particularly adapted in a biological sense to modern day technology. We've barely adapted at all during the entirety of written history. Technology has made our lives significantly easier, but it hasn't substantially impacted our natural tools much. Tech might end up killing us, but it won't be due to dependence issues. Least not anytime soon (soon being on a historic and/or geological time scale).
But yeah, being without kinda' sucks. Losing access to all that information and communication capability feels a lot like I've always thought losing a limb would feel like... massive reduction in capability. Sure, you can still get by, but everything becomes a lot more... clumsy.
Once again you've taken the words from my mouth, Frumple. Furthermore, 'technology'? That's everything which humanity has created, from sharpened rocks & sticks and manmade fire to whatever we'll have achieved when we finally bite the big one. Of
course civilization is dependent on technology to continue existing: we depend on the ability to cultivate food, to create clothing, to transport goods, to travel farther than our own legs can take us, &c. Without technology, human civilization cannot exist. Furthermore, there's not one point in human history where turning back the clock on technological development would have been the better option in the long run. Ferex, nuclear power: hundreds of thousands dead, half a century of incredibly paranoid life, but we're now past the real danger of extinction
and we've got fission reactors to fall back on if we run out of fossil fuels before developing sustainable sources or efficient fusion to the point necessary to sustain us.
On a side note, on a biological level we haven't even really adapted to our
earliest changes, much less modernity. That's conflating 'adaptation' in the lay sense of "I've adapted to the situation at my new job," with the biological sense of adaptation, "A change or the process of change by which an organism or species becomes better suited to its environment." Individuals adapt to technological changes which occur in their lifetimes (or not) on a psychological level; the species is still in the early stages of biological adaptation to relatively primitive technologies (for example, our bodies are still set up to be healthiest when we eat small amounts of food periodically over the course of a day, consistent with a hunter-gatherer lifestyle, as opposed to a few large meals, which would fit more with agricultural humans who both have a food surplus and can't spend as much time being idle).
Author
Topic: Things that made you RRRRRRAAAAGGGGEEEE today: Trust-o-nomics Edition (Read 3765443 times)