For this week’s lesson, we as a class were tasked with learning the idea behind modern technology. The way I see it, it all started with Moore’s Law. Moore’s Law explains that technology would continually grow faster, stronger and more portable, while also decreasing in size. This law was presented by Gordon Moore, one of the co-founders of Intel. His law was first presented in a magazine article in 1965, and has been proven over and over again. Each year companies like Google, Apple, Intel, and so many more are coming up with ways to make life easier, smarter, and faster, all while fitting in the palm of our hands.
The size and geometry of technology, however, navigates us towards a scientist named Buckminster Fuller. Fuller was an inventor who’s basically responsible for the E.P.C.O.T ball. He coined the phrase “Spaceship Earth” and his geometric and streamlined designs have been implemented throughout the world for cars, military houses, and even children’s jungle gyms. He is most famous for his geodesic dome, which we see examples of almost everywhere. His idea that we can pull from nature’s design to create better functioning structures is what prompted the idea “Spaceship Earth”. He also proposed the Dymaxion Forum, which explains that to move forward, we have to look back to see where we came from. Hence the theme of the ride, “Spaceship Earth.” By allowing ourselves to look back on what worked, and what didn’t work, we can pull from and work off of the ideas of previous inventors and propel ourselves into almost a completely new world.
The prediction of a new world brings us to an author by the name of Ray Kurzwell. Kurzwell “has received 20 honorary doctorates, has been awarded honors from three U.S. presidents, and has authored 7 books (5 of which have been national bestsellers)”, and has somehow predicted, almost to the date, how the world would change with the advancement in technology. He estimated the time frame of advances such as wireless voice command, the evolution of artificial intelligence, and the overall capacity of the humane brain. He also predicted innovations like “Siri” and “hey Google” all the way back in 1999. And while these things have made life easier for most of us, it begs the question of “is it too much?” and “Does Technology have too much control?” Thankfully, Kurzwell doesn’t believe that this is the case, and believes each new technology should be shared with the world to make the world a better, smarter, place.
These laws and predictions have been proven time and time again, but still some sceptics say that you can only fit so much power in to such a little chip/processor. Peter Theil is one of these nay-sayers. Theil is a billionaire who made his fortune with the invention of PayPal which he co-created, and by being a major investor in the social media platform Facebook. Even with his influence in today’s technology, Theil is of the belief that innovation has plateaued. His famous work “We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters” is a reflection of this belief. According to Theil, in the past there was immense room for improvement in many areas including Government, Technology, automobiles and more, however we as a society has adopted the notion to “just do things a slightly better than the people around you”. Which in a way is correct because things have gotten so much better than they were originally, the margin for improvement is small. As well, in areas such as Sea travel, energy, and space travel, Theil is mostly accurate in saying that there hasn’t been much progress in those areas unfortunately.
While there are some differences in these authors opinions, most of them agree that advancement in technology would make this world a better place. The discrepancies come in when you look at the time. Moore believes that advancement is ever growing, and hopes never stops, Fuller thought that to move forward we have to literally stop and smell the roses, Kurzwell is really good at predicting the future somehow, and billionaire Theil believes that technology has reached its peak and now remains stagnant into the future unless we try something completely new. In some ways, however, they’re all correct. They are all correct in saying that technology has changed our lives and where we go from here is still to be seen.
My take on all of this is that, they’re not thinking big enough. Sure, we can climb Mt. Everest from the comfort of our own couch using AR, but what if we used similar technology to allow people with depression to see a person they’ve lost once again? Or what if we invented a Nano-bot that eliminates cancer cells? Of course allowing everyone to enjoy new technology is great and fun, but people are using it to be lazy, not to make the world a better place. So, yes, technology is changing the world like we wanted, but it’s not changing it enough.
Academic Angeleigh! 