Does anyone fear technological change/advancement?

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Technology allows me to communicate in ways that are much less stressful and are more effective.

eg.Email, chat, sms etc.

I can search for things on the internet, instead of having to force myself to make phone calls or go to shops etc.

I am quite happy with the level of tech we currently have though. I don't really see anything else helpful coming along.

It doesn't really scare me, but if I could slow down the pace of "progress" on this planet, and in some cases reverse it, then I would, with some exceptions. I think the free market drives technology too fast, so the stuff we get to buy is rushed out before it's been properly de-bugged, in case a competitor gets there first.

The good :
-We will not become instinct (because in 5 billion years the sun will become a red giant and we will all die if we are still stuck on Earth)
-Fun
-Knowledge
-Improved health (no more mental illness and diseases) and improved rate of survival (possibility of immortality)
-Improvement in human intelligence and strength due to genetic changes
-Colonization of space
-Possible discovery of new intelligent species
-It's possible that we get to solve the mystery of the meaning of life
-Possibility of becoming gods (creating new species, modifying physics, creating universe)
-Robots will do most manual work

The bad :
-Pollution (will be fixable with future technologies and Terraforming)
-Addiction to technology(will be curable by modifying the brain patterns) and social withdrawal (teleportation and alternative realities could fix this)
-Increased rate of survival => Overpopulation (By colonizing other planets, this problem is fixed)
-Violent Wars (But there is a possibility that wars becomes completely between machines, so that the population would be safe)

In conclusion : We need technological advancement!

what is "tradition"? is it "the way things have always been done in the past"?.
where does the most distant threshold of "tradition" lie? does it lie in the 1950's where people yearned for more simplicity like the 1930's? does it lie with people in the 1800's who lamented steam power that displaced thousands of jobs? does it lie with people in the 1600's who were disappointed that explosives had changed the battlefield forever?
does it lie in the days of the ancient egyptian empire when people longed for more "traditional" times before the concept of "taxes"?

for me, there is no definition of "tradition", and i do not care, because i look forward to what will evolve, and that is the only reality that will unfold before me.

a basic example of what i look forward to is ...

i presently have lots of fun flying in my flight simulator, and the scenery is quite realistic.
but is is only "quite" realistic.

as i climb out of the airports i depart from, i can see a google earth 2d ground view which is quite crisp and real, but it is dead in 2 ways. it is only 2 dimensional and looks realistic if the elements in view are not tall, and it is devoid of any movement of traffic etc.

i envision the day (maybe after i die but i hope not) that what i see out my cockpit window is real time high definition imagery (streamed via satellites) of the world as it really is right now in a 3d way (not talking about special glasses movie 3d stuff, but the fact that things that are seen from more horizontal angles are rendered with their height components).

i would like to fly a virtual helicopter around the location of my choice and hover and witness what is happening there at this very second.

whatever. i do not fear the future. i fear that i will not experience enough of it to satisfy my hopes.





this comment does not make sense to me.
on the surface i can see that you are thinking in a "magical" way that is spiced with a hint of paranoia, but below that it makes no sense to me.

I fear some of it for realistic reasons. Such as with cars; nowadays, the body computer records everything you do, and it tells the government how you maintain your car, and how fast you drive, and even if you run your air conditioner too much. It's all stored in a chip, and gets uploaded to the government when you have your car inspected/smog tested. Most governments say they're not using this information for anything, but if I believe that is (or will remain) the case, I'm a monkey's uncle.

I also don't happen to like flat screen TVs. Not so much because of any fast advancement in technology, but because the picture is not as good as an old tube. The white is silvery and glary, and fast-moving objects sort of "vibrate" across the screen, when they should be gliding smoothly across.

And cellphones are tentacles of the Devil. No privacy anywhere to be left alone. The infernal thing can blare and blast at you, demanding instant attention, whether you're on the toilet, or in a fancy restaurant, or even in a tent out in the mountains trying to escape from civilization. I wish they'd never been invented. I liked being able to take the home phone off the hook, and be left alone, or leave it on the hook and answer it if I felt like it.

Computers, however, are a good thing. I really appreciate being able to interact with people by eMail and in forums, and not worry about personal contact. I like being able to do a quick search to find out information on anything I want to find out, and that I can go read a newspaper 1000s of miles away, etc etc. All on a whim. That's a definite good development.

Charles

Don't you believe it! They told us that in the 1960s but it was a lie. They do invent machines to do the work of humans, but somehow the jobs on offer to us never get any less tedious and the working hours never get shorter.

You're totally right. They said that in 2000 we would have robots to do everything but nothing changed. That's why I'm really extrapolating in the far future.

I loves teh technology. It lets me do more stuff.

I'm sure someone will be able to come up with a more intelligent and articulate version of what I just said.

If it weren't for technology, the OP wouldn't have been able to ask such a wide audience if they shared his/her fears about technology.

I do have a tendency to fear new technology. That's more to do with my fear of change though more than anything. I still have my old VCR and videos but I have also now got a DVD player and lots of DVDs. I doubt I will be getting a blu-ray player any time soon (although that is partly because I am POOR!). I struggle to see the point of mobile phones which do more than just ring and text, however I understand that some people like their phones to do everything so I wouldn't want to stop them developing these technologies. I just choose to have a ring and text phone rather than an I-phone. The only thing I wish they would invent are headphones which completely contain sound for an affordable price so that all of those ruddy 'leaky' ones go off the market and I can sit on a bus without having to listen to someone else's rap music See if technology didn't advance, these headphones would never exist and I would be doomed to listen to tinny background noise for eternity!

I have a strange feeling that if robots ever do the work, we'll be the robots. Wasn't there a film in which a guy had voluntarily had an arm replaced with a cyber-device that allowed him to produce more, and therefore earn more credits (without which he would have starved to death) ? I suspect it'll be something like that. Unless capitalism eventually does what Marx said it will do, and collapses. In that case we'll just be robotised by force. Always look on the bright side of life.

Aspies are too lazy with too many sick days to be effective work robots, unless hybridised with Russian weight lifting giants

it is my opinion that robots do much of the work these days.

the reason there are still so many manual jobs in most factories i would think, is that the factories are required to retain jobs somewhere in their production lines.

i came to this idea while watching "how it's made" which is a 30 minute show that shows the production processes of everyday products. i am amazed to see the very precision intensive, and extremely rapid manipulations of the forming processes as the product passes down the line, and then bang,... there is a super simple part of the process which is handled by humans.

an example was the production of "bic" ballpoint pens, where plastics were heated and injected into shaft molds at the same time that the caps, end plugs, ink tubes, balls, ball holders, inks and all the other various components were produced automatically at high speed, and they all converged in an assembly line where they were assembled at a rate of about 30 per second.

then they were all grouped into packages, and the packages were parceled into bundles to fill one cardboard box each, and then...........process workers (with gloves and goggles and earmuffs on) packaged the bundles manually into the cardboard boxes and pushed them along where they were again taken into the automated process (and taped, paletted, stickered and plastic film wrapped etc....) and then spat out finished.


i suspected that maybe when that company began, there was little automation, and over the years, as each process was automated, there would have been protests at the job losses pertinent to those processes. i would think that any government that prevails on the company would be disapproving of the number of job losses, and make demands on the company to try and re-skill as many people as possible rather than outright retrenching everyone who was rendered redundant.

i think this would be true for most companies that are automatable, and i would think that the companies would yield somewhat, but nevertheless, the number of employees is still reduced by each new stage of automation. i would think that over time, the companies have vastly fewer manual process workers that are mainly concentrated into deliberately non automated sections of their production lines.

i would think that they may do this to avoid boycotts.

i imagine that if a plant was owned by one person, and if that person so completely automated every aspect of production that there was no further need for any production employees (and they were all sacked), it would then seem like a money machine churning out wealth for the owners sole benefit, and much of society would think ill of it.

in many of the products that have featured on that show, i have noticed unexplainable sections of human involvement along their production lines.
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another example was a potato chip (crisp) factory where the trucks tip the potatoes into hoppers where they are belted off into the production process where they are rattled and blown and peeled and washed etc, ........ and then they pass along an uncovered stretch of the conveyer where people are standing and manually picking off oddly shaped potatoes and tossing them into a bin. the potatoes are sweeping past so rapidly, that it does not seem possible for humans to react in time (especially if a large number come through all at once) to do their job thoroughly.

later in the process after they have been sliced and cooked (all auto), they go through a machine that ensures that there is no chip overlaying any other chip on the belt as it passes through an optical scanner that identifies every unacceptable chip and blows it off the belt with a puff of air. all this happens at about 20 mph. if they can achieve this sort of sophistication, then identifying oddly shaped potatoes would well be in the bounds of automation


i would think that robots would be doing almost all manual work if humans would not resist their own displacement into redundancy with respect to manual work.

If you don't want to be called, why not switch off your phone, or leave it somewhere else, or sell it?

So true! What is REALLY annoying is when it is SOMEONE ELSE's mobile phone going off!

I don't fear it, but I find a lot of it useless and annoying. I'm not opposed to advanced medical technology, for instance, but I do not get and do not want things like iPods, iPads, smart phones, eReaders, and all those other gadgets which are, IMO, completely irrelevant. I don't even own a TV, and I make coffee by boiling water and pouring it through a filter with grounds.

But then, my opinion on the internet is something else entirely. All this information at my fingertips...

Generally, I do leave the ringer off, except when I need to have it on for business. I meant that in the old days, if you were not home, or if you were away from your desk at work, etc., people would just try later, or write you a postcard, and nobody was upset. Now, if you don't snatch up the cellphone instantly and avail yourself to others' commands on their whim, you're considered antisocial. I hate that!

Charles