Are you afraid of Technology?

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RichardG

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This is my personal View.

Overtime, I think to myself and say to myself, where would technology be in the next decade.. 1/2 decades ago or longer, we had fabulous stunning brick cellphones, good weapon to use to break someone skull now days we've the tiny/midget/small mobile cellphone watch's..

Records changing over to CD players now we've stunning MP3 players.
Technology is grown at rapid fast rate, I'd be to afraid to even live another dozen years.. After speaking to about 3 IT Specialist, they told me they are really freaked how technology is grown and at what speed its going at... Every month new products are coming out new mobiles, new software everything ranging from Wireless, Blue tooth, watch's, USB clothing..

Technology is been legacy everyday...
Wonders what new product will be out tomorrow and to keep up with such product what will happen.
 
You should read Alvin Toffler's "Future Shock". In it he explains how rapidly changing technology is affecting society and human beings. Very prophetic book.
 
Valis said:
Stop when they're red and go when they're green...what's to worry? ;)
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LoL, they're automated man, controlled by a central system, a central system that will one day squash us beneath its mechanical foot...

No man, the recent robots built that can walk and do all sorts of things (I think its called Azmo..). It could for instance get a BSOD and just fall (on a child or glass table:rolleyes:) or continue walking until its battery runs out..etc. Robots and things that are centrally managed, that bothers me. Otherwise I'm happy with everything else.
 
True, I see your point. This is actually an interesting question. The way I see it the more autonomy machines/robots have the more we should worry. Maybe we should start seriously thinking about building Asimov's Three Laws into them.

But don't these things (walking robots) have any kind of failsafe devices built in? If they don't they really should. I know industrial robots have proximity sensors coupled to kill switches. Surely commercial ones sold to the public should have too.
 
I was really afraid of my dad's answering machine when I was about 4-5...it petrified me that the thing would suddenly start talking while I was alone in his study fetching something for him..lol.

Oh, and I had this talking Tomy spelling computer too. If you left it switched on for about 45min, it would suddenly say: "Play with me!" in this metallic robotic voice. Imagine hearing that under your bed in the middle of the night when you are a 5yo kid with a wild imagination.
 
lcbxx said:
Oh, and I had this talking Tomy spelling computer too. If you left it switched on for about 45min, it would suddenly say: "Play with me!" in this metallic robotic voice. Imagine hearing that under your bed in the middle of the night when you are a 5yo kid with a wild imagination.
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LOL! That would scare the cr@p out of me if I had to hear that under my bed even now!
 
I worry a bit about the dehumanisation that comes with increased technocracy, and the capability that brings for really massive errors in judgment that a human wouldn't make. For instance i read recently about a hedge fund that was using very advanced computerised mathematical modeling to create financial products, and an event which statistically should have happened once every 250 million years wiped nearly half a billion dollars off their books overnight.


However in general, the more powerful technology is, the better for the user and designer, because it means that the imagination is not bound by the limitations of the technology. Look at game design - the design always revolves around the capabilities of the technology. The more powerful the technology becomes, the less that has to be the case, and the more the creative agent is free to pursue a design vision.
 
cerebus said:
I worry a bit about the dehumanisation that comes with increased technocracy, and the capability that brings for really massive errors in judgment that a human wouldn't make.
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I agree. Maybe it's time we looked at a whole new paradigm in developing software, like programs that fix their own errors/bugs. A basic example is error correction of digital tx. We should look at taking that premise even further. Lots of physical systems have feedback loops that correct errors that creep in during operation, why can't we do that for s/w systems as well! Ok ok, I know that is still in the future, but the first step would be to get rid of Microsux. ;)


cerebus said:
However in general, the more powerful technology is, the better for the user and designer, because it means that the imagination is not bound by the limitations of the technology. Look at game design - the design always revolves around the capabilities of the technology. The more powerful the technology becomes, the less that has to be the case, and the more the creative agent is free to pursue a design vision.
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True, imagination can be infinite...
 
A psychologist once said. The brain is complex. Too complex for us to understand. If our brains were simple enough to understand, we wouldn't be able to understand it.

The same with computers. We can never create a computer that is of superior intelligence to us. Because we can't even grasp the mechanics of our own brain/mind in totality.
 
Picard said:
We can never create a computer that is of superior intelligence to us.
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I'm not sure if I agree with you there. What single person grasps the whole source code of an operating system? Yet humans created it. I.e. it is a very complex system built out of lots of slightly less complex systems, each consisting of lots of slightly less complex systems etc.

Also, I foresee a point where computers reach a sufficiently advanced level that they start evolving by themselves, and the same laws of natural selection will then apply, i.e. the tendency for an organism to become more complex.
 
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