thoughts on technology and our world today

I watched this movie lately that I found to be unbelievably interesting, especially for our course. I think it is the movie Prof. Kitzmann was talking about. It is called: “What the Bleep Do We Know, Down the Rabbit Hole”. So I guess my blog this week is going to have many references to the movie as well as Religion and Technology by Noble.

I get often trapped in my intense dislike for technology, and the kind of world that is built around technology today. I often hear myself saying, as many of us do, that technology is all about instant gratification, glorifying image and fragmenting reality. It creates a world driven by materialism and consumption and within such a world, the community takes a back seat.

What really is the ultimate dream that technology allegedly caters to? One is the ultimate perfection of body. Now some might say as I often do that it is the image of a perfect body that we are driven by, and that is true to some extent; but what this statement omits is the ultimate functionality of our bodies that this dream also promises. In other words, it is not as simple as having a zero size hour-glass figure but it is the core-strength, the agility, the balance and the focus of a body that is ultimately tamed to do what we want, when we want it. Also, it is not simply the good looks that this dream sells us; it is the allure of confidence, careful carelessness, quick and witty attitude. In other words, it goes beyond an image to traits that we wish to acquire. It goes as far as providing those who have the means and money the ability to modify their skill-set through altering their genetic code, a painful process, but one that takes less time and self-discipline than attempting to reprogram our habits.

Technology also offers the means to speed up what we view as mundane tasks with the hope of freeing up our time to live, to observe, to create, to master and to build. If it is not the kitchen appliances, and not the washing machine, computers, then it is the cars, the pre-chopped, pre-cooked food, the products, tap water, lights, and heaters. I tried once to eliminate all technological devices from my life and aside from the fact that I don’t think I was successful in doing that, I had no time left for anything else! Preparing everything from scratch is very time consuming, I tell ya that! This work-load in a pre-technological (industrial revolution) age was divided differently throughout a community so to simply say that today we can do all that is unrealistic.

Technology feeds on the dream of engaging with other worlds, seeing other universes and communicating oversees and across distances almost instantly. Now this might sound like something that we are willing to give up in fear of the dangers of technology, however, I would not be here had it not been for planes. I would not be able to communicate with my parents had it not been for the phone and internet; and we would not be able to have access to the wide range of information that we have today. Technology in many ways penetrated the natural homogeneity of a community that lives together to incorporate many different communities and ways of living. It has not gone the whole nine yards but it helped us take a step in that direction.

Finally, one of the most important aspects of technology, the one I view as most problematic and a reason for many of our misfortunes is entertainment. Technology gives us the ability to be entertained on levels we did not believe possible through television, video games (if they are still called that!), i-pods, entertainment parks, ice-rinks around the season to name just a few. In such, we can be entertained at any time of the day or night. The problem with entertainment is that it takes less effort than building skill-set does and when we habitually engage in the easiest, most accessible entertainment options, they are often the ones that require no thought and no effort. Even if they offer learning opportunities, we do not seek them to learn and hence we often forget about the learning for the sake of mindless entertainment. If we would only plan our free time mindfully and spend it with the intention of growing, of learning, and of acquiring new skill-sets, talents and new ways of thinking critically, would we be different? Would our dislike for technology lessen?

Now to tie this to the course, if the purpose of technology is transcendence, is it transcending our bodies and our world altogether or is it transcending the limitations to reach other possibilities that our bodies and our world already offer? If it is the first, then I believe that we are on a very dangerous track but if it is the second then how does technology achieve its ultimate goal? The movie was brilliant in pointing out that part of our problem is that although we have progressed to use new technologies we still view our identity, our purpose, our possibilities as well as our limitations within the old classical Newtonian science. We believe that we are separate beings when in fact the universe is a living organism in which we are all connected. We believe that the world is stuff (matter) when in fact it is mostly empty. We believe that energy can only be generated through matter when in fact the vacuum in a hydrogen atom is more than the latent energy in all the matter in this world up to 20 billion light-years. We believe that intention does not matter as much as action when in fact intention has a direct way of changing that which we place our intention on. And finally, we believe that things are the same whether we observe them or not, when in fact observation is what allows particles to exist, as otherwise they are simply waves of infinite possibilities and the reason why we all see the same thing is again because we are all connected on a fundamental level. So is it technology or is it the conflict between current technologies and our perception of ourselves and the world that is the problem? My blog is getting too long, as usual, so I will leave you here and hope to hear comments from you in class or via email or blog