In the Year 2525....

[WWJD]

"The more you give over to technology, the more you take away from man" - Star Trek Insurrection

"We always throw away old clothes. Ending is better than mending, ending is better than mending, ending is better …"
- Brave New world 1932

"What you need is a gram of soma*. All the advantages of Christianity and alcohol; none of their defects." - Brave New World 1932 * basically prozac, noloft etc

in the year 2525
if man is still alive
if woman can survive
they may find...

in the year 3535
ain't gonna need to tell the truth tell no lies
everything you think do and say
is in the pill you took today

in the year 4545
ain't gonna need your teeth won't need your eyes
you won't find a thing to chew
nobody's gonna look at you

in the year 5555
your arms are hanging limp at your sides
your legs got nothing to do
some machines doing that for you

in the year 6565
ain't gonna need no husband won't need no wife
you'll pick your son pick your daughter too
from the bottom of a long glass tube

in the year 7510
if God's a-comin' he ought to make it by then
maybe he'll look around himself and say
"guess it's time for the Judgement Day''

in the year 8510
God is gonna shake his mighty head
he'll either say "I'm pleased where man has been''
or tear it down and start again

in the year 9595
I'm kinda wondering if man's gonna be alive
he's taken everything this old earth can give
and he ain't put back nothing...

now it's been 10,000 years
man has cried a billion tears
for what he never knew
now man's reign is through

but through the eternal night
the twinkling of starlight
so very far away
maybe it's only yesterday...

in the year 2525
if man is still alive
if woman can survive
they may find...

- Zager and Evans 1969

No back to your regularly scheduled de-evolution....



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[hemroid]

havnt heard that in years just down loaded it from lime wire

 

[VaBusa]

De-Evolution?!

Think we're better off with technology or not WWJD? Just making conversation...

 

[MrGxr]

Is that a mode of transportation she's getting into or is it one of them "fun" chairs?

 

[shimmyz]

That's a great song. I was from before my time but it brought back alot of memories reading the lyrics. I remember riding in the car with my dad when I was very little listening to that 8track.

 

[WWJD]

De-Evolution?!

Think we're better off with technology or not WWJD? Just making conversation...

VA, I always enjoy our "conversations!" I'm REALLY in a hard place here. My job IS technology, but because it is, I get a front row view of what it does TO and FOR people. Like everyone else, I am a victim of our times and have lots of cool gadgets, but I see alot of it as redirection away from that which matters which is family, friends, love etc - we no longer FOCUS HEAVILY on those things like we were designed to do, instead we have lots of time wasters. Yes, technology has helped us make artificial hearts and limbs and kept people alive, but it has also destroyed an equal amount in the opposite direction. How many artificial hearts does it take to equal one family that splits because someone met Mr Right on the internet? How many artificial limbs will be created for the current plot of kids whose legs buckle under their own weight because they played Nintendo every week for 12 years?

Half of the worlds unhappiness is based on lost direction of roles. [half is just my guess, but I bet it's at least that] With men's role being 'provider' 'builder' ' bringer', technology is accomplishing those and pushing him aside. Many jobs are even lost because a computer does it quicker and better. Is that really helping society or just the corporation? Who is working to correct men's roles? Nobody. Technology certainly isn't.

So, although my bread and butter exists because of others ignorance of technology, and I play video games nightly, I'd trade it ALL, including electricity, for a nice cave and a decent woman to drag around, who smiles when I kill an elk and bring it home for her to cook for us.

I want to thank that punkish music group, DEVO for the term De-Evolution. It's how they created thier name. No really.

MrGXR, its a personal transport of some kind that Toyota is working on.

Shim, that's funny! I heard it as a child too, on a long car ride thru the desert with the parents, but it was radio since we didnt have 8-track. I remember listening to the lyrics and wondering if it would ever really be like that. It seemed SO outlandish... but now.....

 

[WWJD]

DOMO ARIGOTO, HONDA ROBOTO!

Does anyone think it will help soceity when THESE little guys start replacing you at your welding job, construction, data entry, walmart greeter, Network technician, CEO? I see more displaced worker and rising unemployment. But the techheads will be thinking, "Gee we are saving humanity from manual labor!" but you are saving man from EARNING money, which is how we find self value now that we are not out killing buffelo for a purpose.

What ARE we gonna do with all the displaced people?

"I’m not against technology, doctor. I’m against the men who deify it at the expense of human truth." - PALMER "Contact"

LARRY KING
... are you anti-technology? Are you anti-science?
PALMER
No, not at all. The question I’m asking is, are we happier? As a human race, is the world fundamentally a better place because of science and technology? We shop at home, we surf the web, but at the same time, we feel emptier, lonelier, and more cut off from each other than at any other time in history...
... maybe it’s because we’re looking for the meaning, well what is the meaning? We have mindless jobs, we take frantic vacations. Deficit finance trips to the mall to buy more things that we feel are gonna fill these holes in our lives. Is it any wonder that we’ve lost our sense of direction?



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[NCBusa2001]

"I’m not against technology, doctor. I’m against the men who deify it at the expense of human truth."  - PALMER "Contact"

LARRY KING
... are you anti-technology? Are you anti-science?
PALMER
No, not at all. The question I’m asking is, are we happier? As a human race, is the world fundamentally a better place because of science and technology? We shop at home, we surf the web, but at the same time, we feel emptier, lonelier, and more cut off from each other than at any other time in history...
... maybe it’s because we’re looking for the meaning, well what is the meaning? We have mindless jobs, we take frantic vacations. Deficit finance trips to the mall to buy more things that we feel are gonna fill these holes in our lives. Is it any wonder that we’ve lost our sense of direction?

I love that quoted diatribe, one of my all time favorites.

Unfortunatley technology can not be qualified in terms of good or bad. It just is. All we are albe to do at this point is share our observations and continue our questions.

Lets ovserve society. Can "technology" be correlated with the obesity explosion? (#1 preventable health crisis and yes "I'm fat")

Technology=data input=using keyboard=sitting for long periods=big rear end.

That's just for starters.

Chris

 

[Wag]

In the second Matrix movie, it was pointed out that machines were necessary to survive, given the living conditions of the people. That other machines were coming to kill them was pointed out as an ironic juxtaposition of the role of technology.

Quite so, the irony. How often do you hear someone say, "How did I ever live without . . . ?" Fill in the blank with computers, cars, Tivo, etc. etc. ad infinitum. Ultimately, the thing that technology gives us is time.

600 years ago, it required three weeks labor to produce a loaf of bread. Now, it takes 3 minutes worth of wages to go buy same. Okay, the numbers are somewhat contrived though I've seen a comparison of this nature before. The point is, we have more time available to us now than ever before and it's because of the technology we have. Maybe another way to look at it is, 150 years ago, it required a day to travel 10-12 miles. Now we do the same in 8-12 minutes or even as fast a a minute or less.

The key, then, is what do we do with all of that newfound time? Do we do more work? Most assuredly. Do we play more? Without a doubt. Do we spend more time with our families? Going to movies? Driving or flying to faraway places we've never seen before? I don't think technology is the problem, nor is the problem related to the amount of time we have. I think our biggest problem is finding the will to put it all into balance in our individual lives. That requires prioritizing and establishing values so that we don't attempt to do too many "shallow" things and fill our newly available time with depth and meaning. Even doing worthwhile things can be detrimental if we attempt to load up with more than we are able to do or do well.

As an aside, if you look at our economy today, we see that a very significant portion of it is driven by entertainment. We go out to eat. We go to lots of movies and concerts. There are game rooms everywhere and the internet is used quite significantly for gaming and porn, possibly as much as it is for information retrieval. Even looking at the content of a board such as this, the entertainment factor plays a significant role alongside or even above the informational content. I should mention that the economic trend toward entertainment is more prevalent in urban rather than rural locations. The point is, however, that if we were to take the resources we now use for entertainment and spend them on other growth-related projects and activities, we could find that technology would serve us even more effectively than it already does.

And yet, our quest for entertainment has created a feeding frenzy for ever greater technological advances so to shut off "entertainment" too readily would likely cause it's own set of problems. An obvious example is the internet and porn. Porn producers and their software gurus pioneered many of the technologies which put picture and video technology on the web. At least, it seems to be so. Put it this way, which information providers did it first? The porn guys. Video and picture compression was, if not pioneered by them, then perfected by this billion-dollar plus industry!

Eh. Technology is not about making our lives better or worse. It's about creating potential. To bring it full circle, I do 10 times the amount of work in my accounting office now than I did 20 years ago and it's very simply because of the technology. What do we do with the potential we've created?

How did I ever get along with just a pencil and an abacus?!

--Wag--

 

[WWJD]

I love that quoted diatribe, one of my all time favorites.

Unfortunatley technology can not be qualified in terms of good or bad. It just is. All we are albe to do at this point is share our observations and continue our questions.

Lets ovserve society. Can "technology" be correlated with the obesity explosion? (#1 preventable health crisis and yes "I'm fat")

Technology=data input=using keyboard=sitting for long periods=big rear end.

That's just for starters.

Chris

Yeah, 'Contact' movie is very well written. another of my faves.

Perhaps NOT qualifying technology as good or evil is the fallacy of our thinking and we can't recognize that due to our dependant mindset? Obviously it IS just a thing and has no nature to BE good or evil, but I tend to qualify things as evil if they take away or reduce our overall value as human beings in society. Not fact here, mind you, just food for thought

 

[pure_ego]

I have it on good repute that in the year 9595 a race of mechanical chickens will take over the world... assuming a certain family of outer space crime solvers from new jersey doesn't eat their leader "groblok" before he has a chance to start the rebellion.

it was on tv.. so it must be true.

+5 cool points if you know the show.

 

[WWJD]

In the second Matrix movie, it was pointed out that machines were necessary to survive, given the living conditions of the people. That other machines were coming to kill them was pointed out as an ironic juxtaposition of the role of technology.

[other stuff]

How did I ever get along with just a pencil and an abacus?!

--Wag--

The whole Matrix trilogy goes way deeper than just cool movie effects and technology running rampant... the whole sleeping to reality is an exact parrelle to christian perspectives of how people live in their own little world, never waking to the truth. That's what you get 'saved' from - your own false reality: The Matrix built of your own self lies... but back on topic...

while I agree we are saving time, we are not getting as much out of this new time we had, as we used to. the part we NEED is fulfillment adn purpose. if you've ever built anything, like something in a wood shop, or wrote a song, or produced a child, you have LABORED to accomplish something in the real world. And it makes you feel REALLY REALLY good... whole, purpose driven... but we extra time we [me too] waste it "Consuming" instead of "Producing" when Producing is what we deep down really want to do. Why is it most of us here spend a lot of time tinkering with our bikes? We are PRODCUING something, some result, we have a goal, an ambition... what if we bought our Busa's and then let our Robot install the mods, add the bling, so we could have time to do what? Watch more TV?

Yes, it used to take weeks to cross the land - and back then, we made everyting count - ESPECIALLY PEOPLE. The people that we lived with, loved with, cared about and for. We married someone close by, not someone on teh other side of the planet.... someone we GREW UP with and KNEW... not someone picked off a web page with temporarily interesting attributes that we could trade in later... again "consuming" instead of "Producing". Growing with someone was a production, not a consumtion.

Everyone could try this test: make a list for a week of how many things you CONSUME and how many you PRODUCE. This is for you only, so you can define or justify it however you wish. EX: adding mods to your busa, is PRODUCING a result. ridding it for an hour is CONSUMING gas... I'd say producing has permenent effects and consuming is temporary - like riding a busa is fun at that time.

I bet most of us [me too] consume more than we produce.

Does producing 10 times the amount of work at a JOB make you feel that much more successful as a human bean? I, personally, don't feel we are designed to produce SO MUCH and this is a root cause of ADD - brain overload... so we task off things to PDA's, computers etc etc. just a thought

Mankind has many forms of unhappiness, some that are hard to see thru the bling of life... one of them is that our ability to produce is being stripmined away and given to machines.

I say we [me too] are TOO dependant on machines to really see that we could live happily without them. And my aside is, I beleive would could live and love even HAPPIER without them. But, alas, I will never get a chance to prove this theory in this lifetime because we are to dependant already to look back.

Now, think of how often you, and everyone has EVER dreamed of a vacation where you are sitting on a beach overlooking the clear blue ocean next to your wooden bungelo, and your woman, eating banana's and drinking cocnut juice... back to nature... back to "Basics"... when you are consuming life MANUALLY, and producing that which is important like love, connection, protection for your family....

... then you have truly arrived.

Technologyless

 

[VaBusa]

I'm with you WWJD...I see so much good with technology, yet I also see just how dependent we are on it and how much it interrupts our daily lives...don't know about the whole "man as sole provider/thog go kill dinner" analogy, but I do often wish our lives were simplified, allowing more time to just enjoy life...

So much to say on the subject, but I'm sleepy...

'Contact' is one of my favorite movies btw...battles a lot with things I often contemplate...still no answers, but I'm always asking the questions...

 

[Wag]

WWJD, here's a book you might find interesting: The Matrix and Philosophy

I was raised in the Mormon cult and completely brainwashed by it. One of the nomenclatures I use to refer to it now is, "Motrix." "The Morg" is another mockery of it and for similar reasons.

Regardless, the point is, of course, that we can live within mental walls of our own making (most often due to personal laziness) or the making of others (children rarely depart from the tenet by which they were raised).

The more closed off we become, the less we are able to function in the real world. I know people who have made the conscious decision to live their lives in the virtual world of on line gaming. They prefer the sterile environment of the text-based or video-based imaginary creatures they see on the screen and the faceless humans behind them. The reality, of course, is that they are too overwhelmed with the effort which is required to understand the body language, vocal toning, facial expressions, etc. of other people. The internet becomes a hiding place, a fantasy-land where there are not so many life variables which need action.

In some cases, avoidance of human interaction is out of laziness (indicating a conscious choice to do so). Other times, it's because of not knowing how to do it, the result being one of fear of the unknown. In this latter case, of course, the problem can't be solved if the person is unaware that he has it and therein lies the rub: How do you tell a guy he's a social clod, to say nothing of getting him to mend his ways?

Someone did it for me many years ago, thankfully, and I've been working on it ever since. Will continue to do so for many more years, to be sure. It's an effort in a study of something that most people learn before they are 15 or so and which I never started learning until I was 34. Scary, some of the things I did which were really stupid. Makes the stupid stuff I do now pale by comparison.

Regardless, technology makes it easier to create a void between people. What I'm driving at is this: In the early days of the country, it was easy for people to go months or even years before having an encounter with another human being. In some ways, we are moving back into that direction but with a slight difference: Instead of moving to a complete dearth of human contact, we may be moving to a form of pseudo-human contact which is aided by machines. Which is worse? I can't say, really.

What happens when we're all so plugged in, we don't need to see other people? Ever. Are we all going to forget what it's like to see another person smile? Are we going to each be so unsure of ourselves that we are shy to a fault and cannot comprehend what it's like to be in the presence of another human? Or are we going to be so overtly aggressive toward each other that we fail to understand the emotions which make us all human and proceed to either engage in physical battle or run in terror at the sight of each other? Kinda like that movie, "The Net."

Being in a cage, even an electronic one is not a good thing for people. Unless we wish to revert to blatant animalism.

--Wag--

Sorry for the gloom and doom but isn't that what philosophy is all about?!!!

 

[Turbo-Torch]

That's a great song. I was from before my time but it brought back alot of memories reading the lyrics. I remember riding in the car with my dad when I was very little listening to that 8track.

Hate to break it to you, but if you remember listening to that song on an 8-Track.......it wasn't before your time!

 

[rubbersidedown]

"The more you give over to technology, the more you take away from man"  - Star Trek Insurrection

If yer against technology WWJD
a a
c n
k i
e
l
s

How about you "Give Over" to me you're technologically advanced hayabusa?
I could "take it away from you man" anytime,just call me with pick-up arrangements.

RSD