Technology and time have been two concepts that I always had hoped would merge completely in my lifetime. I always fantasized mostly about the future, from wanting to see how different customs and technology could change in a century to witnessing humanity’s end, as grim as it sounds. Curiosity and wonder are two gifts that I am grateful to have as a sentient being as they can drive entire populations to strive to discover the truth. As a STEM major, it does somewhat irk me that so many past trials and research have been consistently refuted and replaced with something closer to the truth. It makes my window of time here on earth seem somewhat pointless. As my high school physics teacher said, “compared to what we will have learned in about one or two hundred years into the future, we are currently teaching the world is flat”. Time goes on and we can only continue to validate and invalidate past claims. Perhaps, given what we’ve learned, the brain is like a computer, perhaps it isn’t. The only thing we know for certain is that time goes on and that we will continue getting closer and closer to scientific truth.
In A Connecticut Yankeee in King Arthur’s Court, reading about Hank Morgan’s thoughts on the “primitive” time period he was in and how clueless the people were in terms of technology and understanding made me take an uneasy step back and reflect. How primitive our era of flying rockets onto distant planets must seem. With this comparative thinking, the iPhone 7 I currently have in my pocket is like carrying around an old clunky typewriter! With our class discussion about technology and reading about the adventures of Hank Morgan and how easily he was able to fool people of a different era made me think about time and its infinite nature. It’s almost a little bit sad in a way, that perhaps I will never see the next biggest technological innovation of the 23rd century, or if we really can get an entire species off the planet Earth and explore the cosmos. Or maybe how easy it would be for some random person from the year 2200 to trick myself and many others by having a more advanced understanding of, well everything. In another sense, I am also somewhat completely content with the technological pace of today. Since I have no basis other than curiosity, wonder and imagination to think about what the future could look like in a few centuries, I can safely admit that I am currently in the most technologically advanced era the planet Earth has ever seen. To think that we rose from a single cell eons ago to a multicellular, full-bodied species that mastered and manipulated the elements to work for our convenience is an amazing thought.
As amazing as the ride technology and science takes us, our brief discussion about the culture of the Amish also was eye-opening. We usually discard these odd communities as “backwards” people, but they also teach very valuable lessons about what technology can do in a negative way. As easily and as quickly as we can be connected to things like family, friends, information and entertainment with the touch of a button (scratch that, touch of a touchscreen), we can as easily and as quickly be disconnected from the aforementioned. I don’t always like to admit it, but having my iPhone 7 can be a blessing and a curse in many ways, and I now have much respect for the Amish and what they value in life. Technology and time are forever intertwined, and as much good as technology can provide our daily lives with, we must also keep an open mind and see how it also takes away from us in certain ways.
It is one of the paradoxes of knowledge that the more we know the less important we seem. The Amish are all right, but they are also a patriarchal society with roles defined to maintain the power of the elders (almost always men). Think of how technology has reduced the tedium of housework. Good job on your first journal.