Open Debate. Is technology...

[Dixon Carter Lee]

Thanks. And it's "you're".

 

[Orlanth]

*Points at Dixon* "Its DarlingBri!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

 

[Doulton]

The general concensus seems to be that people think it's neither good nor bad

 

[Never]

The question isn't whether technology is good or bad, but if humanity is good or bad.

 

[Orlanth]

The question is: Is Never a female or male?

 

[cymbidia]

The question is: Is Never a female or male?

The question is: why would someone rather be a bunny than a human?

 

[Never]

The question is: why would someone rather be a bunny than a human?

The question is: How much wood..

Nah, no need to drag it on like this.

 

[Orlanth]

The question is: why would someone rather be a bunny than a human?

The answer is: I am snugglely

 

[Orlanth]

How much wood would a wood-chuck chuck wood if a wood-chuck could chuck wood?

 

[The_old_man]

As one who has lived through, and remembers, most of the last sixty five years( I don't remember much of the first ten). I am a bit ambivilant about the uses that technology has been put to.

I deplore the nuclear bomb. I believe nuclear power generation must become the primary source.

Enhanced food production is needed to prevent famine.

Communication will, if not stifled, eventualy rid the earth of all forms of prejudace.

Wepons research may eliminate the over-population problem before communication can obviate it's use.

 

[Problem Child]

Technology sucks.

I'll trade the TV, computers, telephones, pagers, cars, pollution, stress, traffic jams, Jerry Springer, and Britney Spears videos for a Winchester, a horse, a clean mountain stream and a log cabin any day.

Send me back to 1880 and I'd be a happy man.

 

[Closet Desire]

weeding out the weak?

Back to the thread topic for just a minute...

Referring to the comment that AIDS is nature's way of weeding out the weak. I would just like to point out that more people in developing nations die of the common diseases that have been all but eradicated in the US. Diseases like measles continue to kill far more people than AIDS. This isn't about new technology--it's about not sharing old technology like vaccines.

I might also point out that the violent wars in Africa are fed by the world's weapon suppliers--chief among them the US, Russia, and China--who have made more powerful weapons available at lower cost and without moral reservation. It's interesting for a country to go over the top about protecting its own citizens from indiscriminate weapon availability and yet provide them so willingly to people who make clear that they will use them to kill their fellows. Captain Kirk would say we are violating the prime directive.

So it would seem that civilised nations prefer to control the "balance" of good vs bad technology by withholding the good technology for themselves. If you're going to get involved by supplying destructive technology then perhaps you have an obligation to provide good in equal measure.

 

[Shy Tall Guy]

Open Debate. Is technology good or bad?

My parnets tell me of the times when they were children how they had it better. They had a greater imagination, were alot more healthy then children today.

If that logic is true then their parental units had it better than them, and so on, ad infinitum back into prehistoric times. Technology has been around in one shape or another ever since we started using tools, and that was a long long time ago.

Does anyone seriously think that cave dwellers had it better in most ways than us? Or even people just 100 years ago? People tend to only remember the good times and forget the bad - they forget when it took them weeks to travel across the continent, when infant mortality was many times higher than it is now, and so on.

Sure our use of technology can cause problems, but most people still can choose to do without if they want.

In my opinnion, human and technology is the thing which will kill the human kind.

Maybe, maybe it will be the one thing that saves us too; if we get hit by a dinosaur killer asteroid colonizing other planets may be the only way we keep from being an extinct species.

STG

 

[Shy Tall Guy]

Technology sucks.

I'll trade the TV, computers, telephones, pagers, cars, pollution, stress, traffic jams, Jerry Springer, and Britney Spears videos for a Winchester, a horse, a clean mountain stream and a log cabin any day.

Send me back to 1880 and I'd be a happy man.

While there certainly were aspects of the 19th century that make outdoor loving people long for lost times, there are things we take for granted now that people then would long for - such as much better health care.

Assuming you had no more knowledge than anybody else of the time, you would also have no antibiotics or modern health care. Step on a nail in a pig pen and you would probably die of infection.

There are still quite a few places where you can have your 45-70 lever action, a horse, a clean stream and a cabin. FWIW, if I was to go back, it would be further than 1880, more like mid 1400s and I would be organizing the natives to fend off the Europeans.

STG

 

[Desert Amazon]

Shy Tall Guy