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  #21  
Old 12-11-2005, 05:53 PM
peritonlogon peritonlogon is offline
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Default Re: Technology\'s Future Psychological Impact

Star Trek also has this odd notion that in the future everyone will have productive hobbies like playing in a string quartet or doing biology experiments, have no desire to accumulate things or power, go around do-gooding and genrally live in a happy, productive, and well informed Marxist society.
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  #22  
Old 12-11-2005, 06:37 PM
KeysrSoze KeysrSoze is offline
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Default Re: Technology\'s Future Psychological Impact

Marxist? Really? Maybe Stalinist, but from my view it looks more like classical fascism. From wikipedia, characteristics of fascism are
1) a very high degree of nationalism
we all know how how they like to pontificate about how great their Federation is and is the height of human achievement and all. Their prime directive itself views pre-warp societies as primitive and beneath them, deserving no aid.

2) centralized control of private enterprise
Starfleet seems to run everything. They control energy production and land aquisition at least, the only thing that matters in an free-energy economy.

and, after it attains political control of a country, involves 3) a powerful, dictatorial state that views the nation as superior to the individuals or groups composing it.
"The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few"

It might look Marxist because with anti-matter and replicators theres really no need for hard currency, but the state still sticks its nose in everyones business and controls the capital of the future economy, and it certainly isn't a classless society (even lowly ensigns are gods among men and are shagging Ashley Judd). Anyway, fascism and modern communism are just two sides of the same authoritarian coin.
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  #23  
Old 12-11-2005, 09:08 PM
BluffTHIS! BluffTHIS! is offline
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Default Re: Technology\'s Future Psychological Impact

I was cathing up on my magazine reading today, and in the latest issue of PC Mag there was a reader letter repsonding to a writer bemoaning the fact that most computer users really didn't understand how their computers worked or how to maintain them and protect them security wise I assume. But he used the analogy that someone who buys a new car might not understand the difference between carbuerization and fuel injection, but he doesn't really care because that doesn't matter to his use of it.

I think that will always be the attitude of the majority of people toward everyday technological products they use. Of course a better understanding would allow them to get a higher level of use in many cases, and also to spot the early signs of malfunctions which could get much worse.
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  #24  
Old 12-11-2005, 10:08 PM
andyfox andyfox is offline
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Default Re: Technology\'s Future Psychological Impact

Seems David is asking what the psychological effect will be on the 5% who have a cursory knowledge of how the then-current technology works and/or the smaller percentage that have a hope of understanding the underlying principles.

I suppose it will be the same as it's been throughout history. Those who think they know more than others, and that the others will never be smart enough to hope to know what they (the smart ones) know, will look down on the dummies, and think that their smartness means that they can do anything better than the less smart. Indeed, they can, in the sense that, as David has pointed out, smarter people, all other things being equal, will do a better job at anything.

But if the gap between the knowledge of the smart and the lack of knowledge of the less smart widens, and the smart realize this, there may be a psychological hubris that causes the smart to forget that not everything is equal and that they cannot simply apply their smartness to all areas or situations without care and deep thought.
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  #25  
Old 12-12-2005, 03:30 AM
Goodnews Goodnews is offline
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Default Re: Technology\'s Future Psychological Impact

The effect is simply an angrier, meaner IT technicians cursing the 95% of the populace. Ironically, these 95% are to be thanked for giving the IT guys employment.

FWIW this trend is nothing new, in fact it is the natural cycle of any technology. A search on Technoology S-Curves will lead to a realization that many engineers and inventors rarely make the jump from old to new technology since many have invested much time into being an expert at their chosen field.
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  #26  
Old 12-15-2005, 03:37 PM
Shandrax Shandrax is offline
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Default Re: Technology\'s Future Psychological Impact

The future will be a repetition of the past. Around 1900 technology was advancing at such rapid speed that it changed everyone's live and made them jobless. People were either rich or extremely poor. Then came the war....

It will be just like that. Technology will take over in all areas and push people out of their jobs. They will be poor, there will be revolutions or at least the attempt of it. In the end the USA and China will fight a nuclear war over world trade, price dumping and the last resources.

Hopefully we will be all dead by then, so we don't have to go through this apocalypse.
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  #27  
Old 12-15-2005, 05:07 PM
Rduke55 Rduke55 is offline
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Default Re: Technology\'s Future Psychological Impact

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A hundred years ago technology had only a minor impact on the day to day lives of people.

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I disagree completely. Technology dominated peoples' lives one hundred years ago exactly as much as it does today. Every facet of every moment of every day in 1905 involved technologies in manufacturing, agriculture, medicine, etc. Every human being in western civilisation in 1905 covered themselves with manufactured goods, made their homes from manufactured tools, was employed in some task that required manufactured goods, etc. Boots, buttons, cloth, knives, guns, glasses, buggy whips, plows, machines, everything. In fact, man is defined by his technology. Without our technology we are naked apes, shivering and being eaten by bears.

Just yesterday it occured to me that everthing in the modern world, literally hundreds of billions of manufactured items, is the end result of an unbroken chain of manufacture that muse go back a minimum of seven to ten thousand years, possibly longer. Modern goods are made from tools and machines that were made with tools and machines that were made with tools and machines . . . The last time that tools themselves were created from nothing but new, raw materials available in and on the Earth, and the application of nothing but human labor, had to be many thousands of years ago. It could be argued that certain native tribes in North America and elsewhere around the globe that still practiced raw toolmaking traditions like stone knapping are exceptions. But I would argue that those tool lineagaes are almost certainly extinct. Modern tools like manufactured knives have completely replaced native toolmaking traditions.

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Furthermore at least 20% of the population had at least a vague understanding of those technolgies along with the ability if, need be, to grasp them more fully.

[/ QUOTE ]

I doubt this as well. Did 20% of the population in 1905 know how to manufacture gun powder, a thousand year old technology? Did 20% of the population know how to make steel? How to weave cloth? Manufacture paper? How to build and operate a steam engine? How to make a gun? And to the extent that there was some fraction of the population "vaguely familiar" with the principles behind these technologies, I would argue that percentage has not dropped in the modern populace (as poor as our education system is, there is still bound to be 20% of the population that succedes in spite of it).

I would argue that in 1905 the division of labor was as absolute as it is now, and that few people worried about how the locomotive worked or how to make gun powder, unless they worked on locomotives or at a gun powder plant.

As for technologies becoming ever more intricate with ever fewer people able to understand them, we already have that. A modern airliner is so complex that no one member of the team of engineers that designs it has a complete understanding of every component and scientific principle behind the design. Engines are ordered from engine manufacturers that meet certain specifications. It weighs so much, consumes so much fuel, produces so much thrust, etc. The people designing the wing most likely have only a rudimentary understanding of the mechanics of the engine, and the people who made the engine probably have only a rudimentary understanding of wing design. The human factors engineers who design the cockpit have little understanding of aerodynamics and lift, or hydraulic controls, or landing gear design, etc.

[ QUOTE ]
Now, and even more so in the not too distant future, technology will have a major impact on peoples's lives. And only maybe five percent of the population will have even the most cursory understanding of how the gadgets that almost eveyone will be so dependent on, works. Even fewer will be smart enough to have any hope of fully understanding their underlying pricnciples and even fewer still, actually will.

[/ QUOTE ]

Paradoxically I think you're being both to harsh on people and too generous. I think that we're already at the point where the majority of people have only a rudimentary understanding of how the technologies we're dependent on work, but I believe that if not most, at least a good chunk of people do in fact have that rudimentary understanding. Which, given the division of labor, is probably more than they require at all.

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I wondering what effect this will have on thinking people.

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I suspect very little.

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I can't believe I read this excellent (IMO) post after that awful one in Politics.

I agree with Borodog's stance here.
David's original post seems to have a lot of modern bias in it. Technological spurts similar to today's have been occuring pretty frequently. Look at the industrial revolution. It changed people's lives in a ton of ways. What about the telegraph? Trains? Mass production of antibiotics? Within the 100 year mark but out of the digital age: automobiles, flight, radio, TV?
And I agree that the 20% figure seems very high.
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  #28  
Old 12-15-2005, 06:07 PM
Borodog Borodog is offline
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Default Re: Technology\'s Future Psychological Impact

[ QUOTE ]
I can't believe I read this excellent (IMO) post after that awful one in Politics.

[/ QUOTE ]

Perhaps you should reconsider your interpretations of the post in Politics then.
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  #29  
Old 12-15-2005, 06:14 PM
Rduke55 Rduke55 is offline
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Default Re: Technology\'s Future Psychological Impact

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I can't believe I read this excellent (IMO) post after that awful one in Politics.

[/ QUOTE ]

Perhaps you should reconsider your interpretations of the post in Politics then.

[/ QUOTE ]

No. Very different subjects.
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