Defining Our Past And Shaping Our Future
The
world seems to be advancing technologically so rapidly that even some of the
devices which were at the pinnacle of consumer luxury a couple decades ago are
now some of the most rudimentary and perhaps sometimes not even recognizable by
the younger generations. I myself am relatively young at 24, and yet I've had
the opportunity to witness the incredible advancements of quite a few branches
of technology in my time so far. There must have been a time when record
players, to give a simple example, were such amazing devices, and then cassette
players became so much smaller and portable, and then CDs offered so much more
space and quality, and then the digital era offered even better quality and eliminated
the frustrations of skips and scratches and misplacing and limited storage. I
remember listening to cassette tapes as a kid, and buying my very first CDs as
a young teenager, and then buying my very first mp3 player a few years later,
and being so utterly fascinated at
every step along the way.
The
first mp3 player I ever bought, sometime around 2004, seemed so wildly
incredible at the time. For the hefty price of $70 or so I could fit 40-some
songs on a 128 megabyte device, which was more than twice what I had grown so
accustomed to fitting on a mix CD. And on top of that there was no concern over
tracks skipping on a jog, or ever having to buy new blank CDs when I wanted to
make a new mix. This was the most profound appreciation of mine at the time; I
didn't need piles of mix CDs anymore. I didn't need to toss a disc every time I
wanted even one single new song to be included on the current mix. The digital
contents could simply be updated. And now, for the same price or less, you can
easily get 8 gigabytes of space or
more and the capacity for thousands upon thousands of songs and any combination
of separate playlists. The sum of the contents of dozens and dozens of mix CDs
can be enjoyed by a few touches on a handheld digital media player with
sufficient size.
Similarly,
video media has gone from VHS to DVD to Blu-ray (not even considering all of
the varieties of digital file types able to be shared online) with the quality
and cost improving all along the way. Of course, when a new format and new
devices to play them with are developed, across all medias, the prices start higher,
but they quickly decline and before long a device vastly more powerful than the
one you purchased several years before is even
cheaper. Today I could buy an mp3 player with 16 times the storage capacity
than that first one I ever purchased for a mere ten dollars. And you would probably face difficulty in even finding
a place that will take your old VHS tapes or even DVDs from you for a fraction
of what you paid for them back in the day. Their demand has almost entirely
vanished, for good reason, in the wake of so much vast improvement.
This
digital age has certainly disrupted things, and not only in the music and video
industries. The high technologies of even a few decades ago not only lose their
popular use and their monetary value, but you can hardly even give them away sometimes. They just
become so utterly outdated by the perpetual advancement of newer devices and
ideas, and eventually only the vintage or nostalgia-seeking collectors see any
use whatsoever in their ownership. But they will always serve as healthy
reminders of how far we've come, and tantalizing hints at where we're still
going.
Not
too long ago I bought a shiny new printer. And the other day I needed to scan a
document so that I could attach it to an email. And so I did; I put the paper
on the tray, pressed the scan button, and selected its destination. And it
struck me right then, considering for the first time this option that was now
available to me to send it directly into a folder on my PC, how absolutely incredible technology is. This was all done wirelessly--the printer
has no tangible link with my computer. And yet, when I place a piece of paper
onto its tray and command it to scan it for me, suddenly an exact digitized
replica of it exists as parts of the 1s and 0s navigable within the depths of
my computer. And I can send this data to anyone else on the planet if I wanted
to, and they could have it, see it, even print it out for themselves, and no
physical link was ever made between us. It's like exactly how magic would be if
magic were a real thing, but this is
real and we can understand it and we can manipulate it to our will.
Arthur C. Clarke said that "Any
sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." I think
this holds some deep insights, considering so much of what we have at our
disposal in today's world that would probably send a person from a thousand
years ago screaming away in terror and condemning us as demons. Who could have
thought, at the time, that we'd be able to almost effortlessly communicate with
people anywhere else on the planet without even any physical link? Or even see
them on video monitors? Or fly across the oceans? Or film movies? Or cover so
much of the planet with artificial light? Or find the answers to so many
questions with just a few keystrokes into an online search engine? Sometimes I
wonder if the entire concept of magic has really been all along just the inexorable progression of our thoughts and understandings of
the world transformed into the fanciful dreams of what we wish we had the power
to do.
And then the day comes when we do have that power. Have you noticed how
so many things are becoming more and more automated and touch-free? Oftentimes doors will open for you as you
approach, lights will turn themselves on as you enter a room, toilets will
flush for you as you leave, faucets and soap dispensers and hand dryers will
dispense for you as you place your hands under them, and devices will even operate
by spoken command and turn themselves off after an idle period. Increasingly
often you don’t even have to touch a doorknob, or a light switch, or a toilet
or faucet handle, or a paper towel dispenser (or even a paper towel). You can
walk into a bathroom, use the facilities (well, a guy, at least), wash and dry
your hands, and leave, all without ever
touching anything.
You don't even have to touch your
hard-earned cash anymore. I
handle cash less and less often even as I continue to make more money and
purchase more things. I rarely have more than twenty dollars in hard cash in my
wallet; more often than not I have none at all. It strikes me sometimes that
this is a really incredible thing, this ability to accumulate and spend money
without ever actually touching the
tangible pieces of paper and cotton and linen we’re so used to thinking of it
as.
Like
most, I imagine, I work a job and have funds automatically deposited to a bank
account with every paycheck. I never actually see it. I don’t bring a check to a bank, and my wallet doesn’t grow
fat with bills. The money just shows up as if a fundamental part of my being. So
long as I utilize only that amount of money, debit purchases are like the
simple returns on that labor, to be acquired at will. Each time it deposits it’s
like I just became worth that many more dollars, and it’s almost as if I can
just walk into places and visit websites and help myself to my desires, as if
my presence holds an intrinsic worth only requiring verification by a small
piece of plastic and a few numbers. With the simple swipe of a card I can walk
out with a cart full of food, or appliances, or video games, or any combination
of things I wish to own, or even have them delivered
to me. And that little piece of plastic, that card which represents my
monetary worth, doesn’t change. It remains
safely in my wallet and yet represents so much of what is laid before me to
enjoy. I only have to go out and acquire it. Sometimes it feels like I’m not
actually purchasing something, I’m just going and grabbing a thing that I want
and it’s now mine and later I go and perform some tasks that I enjoy doing and
the cycle repeats and the world is just mine to appreciate as I please.
Social
media has become a truly massive force in the world. In a few seconds you can
create a profile on any of several major websites, add some pictures and some interests and some history,
and continuously present yourself to the
world through public postings. Some
reports say that as much as 25% of all Internet page views are on social media
sites alone. You've probably heard some of the generic complaints such as
"people used to actually know their neighbors" and yet today's
society has been shaped so that you can know any number of people all over the world. Of course there is
some concern over still maintaining actual physical relationships with people,
but sometimes it seems as if the simple new wave of potential is making it seem like so much of the physical is
gone. Such a phenomenon has never been known before, so it's no surprise that
the controversies abound. I don't believe this is the case; I still see people
hanging out outside with each other all the time. I still spend as much time as
I can get with my dear friends around town. I still cherish face-to-face
communication more than any other, and I can only assume that this is generally
the case universally. It's just that we have so many more opportunities now. If not for social media I would have lost the
majority of the connections I've been able to maintain despite the major moves
I, and others, have made. Never before has a person from, say, the U.S. been
able to randomly become acquainted with a person from, say, Australia, and
share thoughts and feelings with each other without ever having actually been
closer to each other than a few thousand miles. A healthy mix of digital and
physical communication is arguably more valuable than any other combination has
ever been. You can even share your physical relationships with your digital
ones, and vice versa. You can connect with more people around the planet than
you can likely even comprehend. Thus cultural hurdles are so much more easily
avoided. The world seems like a much more fitting, opportunistic, shared place when people have social
access to others around the globe. I don't see how that's a bad thing if you
look past the minor issues.
If
you're curious about something, you can find almost anything to your heart's
desire with a brief Google search. The amount of information available to us
just sort of "floating" around on the internet (also in textbooks and
the like) is truly staggering. A person can get at least a basic understanding
of such topics that took the prodigious minds of Newton, Darwin, Bohr,
Einstein, and the like an entire lifetime
to puzzle out…using nothing but a keyboard and a few keystrokes, and/or some
page turning, and some reading. As a certain telescope manufacturer, Meade,
proclaims on their website, with even a cheap telescope and the knowledge of
how to find certain celestial objects one "will see more objects in one
night than Galileo saw in a lifetime."
For
so much of history a person's skill set has been almost exclusively utilized
for monetary gain. That was how you made your living. But today, with this
tremendous advent of social connectivity through the internet most of all,
people are willing to share their expertise on a subject, with their own
precious time and resources, for no other gain than the near-selfless enjoyment
of doing just that. Of course, some
gain fame and fortunes still, but so many remain virtually anonymous despite
their thorough investigations into insightful questions or the development of
popular apps or wiki articles or software or independent music or film or
artwork or writing or general advice or practically anything one could desire
to seek out. There seems to be a profound movement in the use of spare time and
skills for the betterment of the general public even if this means that the
contributor does not receive specific recognition. Perhaps such people just
simply treasure the enjoyment of doing something worthwhile even if it's not relevant to their personal
career. I find this incredibly beautiful.
And
there are always still people out there making discoveries, even at this very
moment, and our descendents will, in turn, be able to seek out and understand
their contributions in the same way (probably even more efficiently) that we
are entitled today. You don't have to be an employed astrophysicist, or
personally know someone who is, to share
in the current times of such a field. Each generation has the advantage over
the previous of having access to the accumulation of all of recorded history in
their grasp, and today more than ever (and tomorrow even more so) this unimaginably
deep well of knowledge, this collection of our incessant desire to understand
the deepest workings of the world around us, can only continue to provide us with more understanding, which in turn leads to more probing questions,
which in turn leads to more insightful answers, which in turn leads to more
understanding, which in turn leads to more probing questions…
The
world is certainly changing, shaping, progressing ever-onward. We have at our
disposal things that were probably never even dreamed about in the wildest
fantasies of our distant ancestors… feats that they may have never even
imagined the grandest wizard could perform. The boundaries of our knowledge
are, at every new moment, always pushing the frontiers of our thoughts in new
directions. The most fantastic, magical ideas in the minds of those living
today could very well be the simple play-things of the children of a few
generations to come. This all just makes me so
prideful to be here—part of humanity. I look forward to every other new
advancement, every improvement on our quality of life, for as long as I can
enjoy them. The best is yet to come. It's going to be so fascinating.
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