Colin Randles
Journal Entry #8
We seem to be in a time of rapid development of technology. When I was a middle schooler, it was average for kids to get our flip phones in 6th or 7th grade. You couldn’t do much on them except for texting and calling. I also remember using a portable CD player and taking that to the pool as a child. The ipod/iphone changed everything, and now toddlers are listening to music and playing games on their parents phone, and getting one for them as soon as they can read and write. We are the last generation to have baby pictures that aren’t on iphones. The strides we have made in the evolution of pieces of technology such as computers, TV’s, music devices, appliances, etc.. is currently at an unprecedented rate. We are creating machines that are smarter than we are (the web – Delaney), and can compute/do things more efficiently than we can. Hopefully this technology will be limited to just enhancing our society, and not taking over, which is what Blackmore talks about in her memetics. This is a dangerous territory, as we are essentially removing ourselves as “the” apex predator and top of the food chain.
This development of technology has negative consequences that go along with the great things they have brought to society. Ewaste is becoming a huge issue in developing countries. Will talk about that more in the final paper, but did a project on it in environmental class. This stage of society reminds me of the late 19th and early 20th century when the worlds fair was held in Paris. This is the firm time people had seen artificial lighting, military technology exploded, people were introduced to new cultures etc… This new technology seemed great at first, but had negative consequences seen in the early 20th century with an entire generation of young men wiped out in WW1.
This also reminds me of Connecticut Yankee, when Hank Morgan introduces new technology very quickly, attempting to bring 6th century England up to 19th century technology very quickly. Society ends up collapsing, because it is at such a fast and unnatural rate. Introducing things way over the heads of the people, or at such a fast rate can be detrimental, and as we are coming upon the third replicator, this could be what Blackmore was talking about that species wiped themselves out. This exact model played out in Connecticut Yankee.