Technology: The Modern Pied Piper

[coberst]

Technology: The Modern Pied Piper

The Pied Piper of Hamelin is a story by Robert Browning detailing a legend regarding the abduction of children from the village of Hamelin in 1284.

The town of Hamelin was rat infested and the citizens hired a man, who described himself as a rat catcher, to rid them of their rats. The man accepted their offer and used a musical pipe to lure the rats into following him. He led them into the river where they drowned. Despite his success the town reneged and refused to pay him.

The man later returned to town one Sunday morning; while the citizens were in church he used the musical pipe to lure the town’s children into following him out of town. The children were never seen again.

Technology is our modern day version of the Pied Piper of Hamelin. Technology has enchanted the Global village, especially the young, with hand-held gadgets and various kinds of digital technology to the extent that reading and intellectual growth has become seriously hindered.

Sapiens seek titillation and seem to find it foremost in trivial pursuits; technology facilitates those pursuits while simultaneously facilitating a more comfortable standard of living.

Our lives are filled with clusters of goals to be achieved and means devised to reach those goals. We have proximate goals and ultimate goals that we try to make coherent throughout our lives.

When we focus our mental prowess on goals and the means for achieving those goals we come face to face with the fact that we spend great quantities of our intellectual energy on means and very little intellectual energy on long range ultimate goals.

Economics dominates our thought processes in matters of defining goals. We give insufficient intellectual energy toward moral values that will help us set useful long range goals.

When we examine the matter of means and ends we discover that we have become enchanted with technology as our Idol, it becomes the means to achieve whatever goals we might decide in the future. Technology, however, provides little help in establishing goals that can alleviate our most stressful problems.

[Cantando]

Originally Posted by coberst

Technology is our modern day version of the Pied Piper of Hamelin. Technology has enchanted the Global village, especially the young, with hand-held gadgets and various kinds of digital technology to the extent that reading and intellectual growth has become seriously hindered.

Sapiens seek titillation and seem to find it foremost in trivial pursuits; technology facilitates those pursuits while simultaneously facilitating a more comfortable standard of living.

Our lives are filled with clusters of goals to be achieved and means devised to reach those goals. We have proximate goals and ultimate goals that we try to make coherent throughout our lives.

When we focus our mental prowess on goals and the means for achieving those goals we come face to face with the fact that we spend great quantities of our intellectual energy on means and very little intellectual energy on long range ultimate goals.

I don’t think technology, per se, is at fault. The problem lies in how it is portrayed and sold as something that is essential to life. It’s like saying guns are evil. It depends on how they are used.

Children are, especially, at the mercy of advertising and peer pressure. If they don’t have the latest gadget to show their friends, they feel inferior. However, parents have a lot of influence.

I overheard a guy recently on the train, describing with great enthusiasm how he was installing a TV and computer in virtually every room of his house for his family. Why would anyone want to do that?

As for long term goals, how about short term ones, like dropping some of these people into a jungle without their gadgets and saying, “Now, survive that!”.

[coberst]

I think that our very serious problem is one of morality. In my view morality is about the relationship between humans. We have in the last century spent very little intellectual energy toward moral problems; at least it is minor compared to the energy expended in pursuing technology.

Because we have not learned to live together and because we have developed the technical means to easily destroy both our species and perhaps even our planet we cannot any longer enjoy the luxury of apathy regarding morality.

The only solution I see is that we must develop a much greater degree of intellectual sophistication so that we can comprehend our problem and perhaps also find solutions.

This requires that adults quickly become learners. We have little time to waste. We adults must become self-actualizing self-learners. We must develop a hobby that might be called ‘getting an intellectual life’. Adults can no longer store their intellects, with their year book, in the attic when their formal education ends.

[Brutha]

Technology, however, provides little help in establishing goals that can alleviate our most stressful problems.

I don't think that global goals could be formed without airplanes and fiber optic cabels or satelites.

It very ironic that you use a very technological medium to form the idea that technology doesn't help.

We have in the last century spent very little intellectual energy toward moral problems;

I don't think that is true.
Actions like giving woman voting rights required a lot of intellectual energy and it's a great success.
Racism is also a lot less severe than 100 years ago.

In Europe we have had sixty years without war. That it quite an accomplisment given European history.

We have given all those African states souvereignity.

We abolished the death penalty in Europe and in many US states.

[coberst]

There is a level of technology that becomes very dangerous for the species. It is that level when we humans have the power to easily destroy our self without the intellectual sophistication to prevent that from happening. We have long ago passed that point.

We do not allow children to drive because they lack the intellectual sophistication to handle such a dangerous situation. We are adolescents with far too much power for our level of sophistication.

[Brutha]

We do not allow children to drive because they lack the intellectual sophistication to handle such a dangerous situation. We are adolescents with far too much power for our level of sophistication.

In the post above you claimed that technology would be harmful. That is different from the claim that techonlogy wasn't increasing the growth of intellectual sophistication fast enough.

It is that level when we humans have the power to easily destroy our self without the intellectual sophistication to prevent that from happening. We have long ago passed that point.

And haven't destroyed ourselves. Even in the worst global warming case it might kill 90% or so of the specis on earth but I won't kill humans, we could survive ten degrees more or less.

States with atomic weapons didn't go to war with each other.