We love technology… as a society, that is, I’m not so sure how I feel about it personally.
Much more incredible is the human mind of course. I’ve often seen quotes saying the human brain is more than 100x more powerful than any computer that exists at the moment. I don’t know how anyone could measure such a thing in a way to come up with that statistic.
And the internet holds a lot more actual information, but the links in between those bits of data are what makes the brain much more intelligent in my opinion. You are immediately able to recall what you need, and mainly ignore what you don’t. And also make judgements on things, give recommendations based on what you know about a situation and so on.
Also, anything we come into contact with, invent, own or whatever else, we consider as valuable only if and when it becomes relevant to us. Relevant usually means satisfying the needs or desires of a human life. In the end, a human life is understood as the consciousness within a human mind, so why not put more emphasis on what is going on there, as it is both the source and the target of everything else?
For example, we could use the internet to find beauty secrets, treatments, products, which ones are new to us, old secrets, close to our locality, specials and deals. Alternatively however, we could develop our understanding of our own beauty and others to a deeper level, relating to biological, sexual, social, evolutionary, influences for example, or forming a philosophy on it based on our understanding of social structure, gender issues, ethnic identity, contemporary aesthetics and so on. And maybe more accessible and relevant, also developing the brain in terms of understanding of social expectations, negotiation of private preferences in relation to these, basically developing the personality to creatively and confidently carry your own preferred or natural look and have it accepted and admired by others.
For example, I mean a lot of people spend a lot of money and much effort on trying to look a certain way like magazine models. Lately, a lot of things that no ordinary person would have done 20 years ago are common, for example eyelash extensions, hair treatments (which also are kinds of technologies) are far more elaborate than what our mothers had access to and more and more women wear heavy makeup on a daily basis. The general goal of these things is to increase her own profile in society therefore/and/or attract a more valuable partner.
Without getting into whether these goals are meaningful valuable or anything else, let’s just say that these are goals and the point of a goal for the person whose goal it is, is to get there. However too many women after putting much effort and sacrificing much money which is work hours and so basically sacrificing large proportions of their lives, on these goals, still end up with unattractive partners who don’t necessarily treat them specially well, and low respect from society. This is usually because they are lacking in personality and/or the knowledge to use their assets well.
This is for the individual, but I feel like the advantages of being aware of your own strengths and preferences and having well developed knowledge to make the best of them are even more obvious for society as a group. When you have a group of people wanting to achieve the same thing, only 10% can be in the top 10% of these and feel like they have won, and a lot of people will feel average or like they are a loser. Wheras if you all have different ideals a lot more people will feel like they have won, from their own definition of it.
Okay this is just one example, I feel like it relates to a lot of the people I see but I’ll choose a more intellectual activity than beauty for my second example.
Language learning- automatic translation tools are improving constantly, great devices are being developed to help learners, such as games on the computer, iphone, and anything else to learn vocabulary and grammer. Electronic dictionaries have more words than traditional ones, as well as phrases, business language, idioms, and often have 5 or 10 languages stored on them.
But in the end, the fact remains that language acquisition is so much more easy and effective when it is started during childhood. And so it is a shame that people are so ill equipped in terms of knowledge about bilingual or multilingual education. when it comes to their families whether it is teaching two or several languages which the parents have a background in, or giving their monolingual child another opportunity.
Furthermore, looking further at minority and endangered languages, it becomes obvious that no technology for recording or organizing langauge is any substitute for the language environment continuing to be alive and vibrant. Nor is this priority valued in many areas, particulary by governments. The only way is for society to recognize that the only way knowledge really exists is in human minds with the understanding of our consciousness, and that the only way to keep it alive is to pass that knowledge to future generations.
inthehouseofmirrors 