Theoretical Questions re Technology

I always think about the line from Jurassic Park when I think about technology: 'Your scientists were so busy worrying whether or not they could that they didn't stop to think whether they should.'

Arguably when one is getting paid and funded its not necessarily a matter of could and should.

That is in fact how Dr Grant came into the story in the first place.

They offered to fund his future expeditions and he jumped at the chance.

Science in many, if not most cases are funded by outside resources, and its important to keep that in mind.

My thinking was, why not start with relatively small dinosaurs.

Of course, Velociraptors were much smaller than depicted in the movie.

Targeran Arynal wrote: I always think about the line from Jurassic Park when I think about technology: 'Your scientists were so busy worrying whether or not they could that they didn't stop to think whether they should.'

I was wondering if anyone would pull that one out.

If you read the book Ian Malcolm has a much longer and better speech on the same subject. They cut it down a lot for the movie.

Im waiting for the myriad of other cliches that are usually brought up.

However, in regards to Ian Malcolm, yes, he was much cooler in the book.

I also like the chapter introductions explaining entropy within a closed system.

I never have read the book but they should have just gone ahead and given Goldbloom the extra screentime, he did a great job in that role. There were also some good ideas about technology brought up in the Matrix movies too. 'Did you ever have a dream that you were so sure was real?' I do think this is a subject that lends itself to cliche responses; one of the most common cliches proffered in response to prompts on this topic is post-modern cynicism promulgated in the name of intellectualism. Interestingly it is this very attitude which is at the root of the conflicts between man and his technology in a lot of the stories that have been mentioned so far. It may in fact be the only refuge left us, apathy and the willingness to hold a wry humor about the playing out of our own failures and frailties in the face of forces so much greater than us.

Khaos wrote: I will say that most people are knee jerk dystopian and negative, an not just in regards to technology.

Especially because that makes for great movies and comic books.

I agree most people are knee jerk but not dystopian and yes it draws people to movies.

I think the esence of the problem is technology evolves faster than human biology. If social evolution kept pace with technology we'd have balance or at least more balance since social evolution would lage tec and would always catching up.

I agree most people are knee jerk but not dystopian and yes it draws people to movies.

There is a reason the news sells you fear and death.

Certainly, atrocity in variety happens, but the news would have you believe thats all that happens.

People stay glued to there screens and news that are negative far more than positive.

People will fund a military (especially if those people believe they are in danger) than they will fund a space program that asks for a miniscule amount in comparison.

How many times here has someone felt a future foreboding in the force?

Or in the future in general?

Yeah, people arent dystopian at all...

Rickie The Grey wrote: If social evolution kept pace with technology we'd have balance or at least more balance since social evolution would lage tec and would always catching up.

Well yeah, thats what ive been saying, but if a frog had wings it wouldnt bump its ass when it hopped either.

For some reason, people can accept there tech moving faster than there society.

That is, no one wants to have to change themselves.

[quotePeople stay glued to there screens and news that are negative far more than positive.
][/quote]

Just because negative emotions are easier to evoke than posistive doesn't make people dystopian.

Why do people respond to negative news? The a strong emotional responses stimulates adrenaline and adrenaline is a powerful and adictive substance. Irresponsible media addicts the population to negative news!

Rickie The Grey wrote: I think the esence of the problem is technology evolves faster than human biology. If social evolution kept pace with technology we'd have balance or at least more balance since social evolution would lage tec and would always catching up.

I agree that herein lies much of the challenge we face in our modern age. Technology vast enough to change the lives of human beings to the degree that we have seen come on in the last two or three centuries has been very very rare for most of the history of our race. For the vast majority of history you lived the same life as your parents, and their parents, and their parents, and so. You didn't ever go more than a few miles from the place you were born and your daily tasks were the same and were to be accomplished by the same means and in the same time frames. Your elders could offer you wisdom that was directly applicable to your daily life because the course that their life had taken from birth into maturity and then senescence was to be your path as well.

Now technology has made vices of what were the moral necessities of our parents' generations and virtues of the one-time vices. Parents who had their children in the 80's didn't have childhood experience with the internet to help give them context into which to put their own children's experience into. And the same was true of them and their parents with the technologies of those days, and so on and so on or the last 5 or 6 generations that have come. Now instead of continuity of daily experience the only continuity is the need to adapt rapidly to the constant and immense changes happening in our world, many if not most of which are based on technology's advance. It is a time as full of danger as it is promise and no one can tell us what to expect or how to conduct ourselves, we each have been left to figure that out for ourselves.