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Sun 9 May, 2004 04:29 am
The primary goal of technological advancement should be to increase people's efficiency so that everyone has more leisure time
For most of the past centuries, the advancement of developing technology has increasingly enhanced human ability in producing enough food and other products more than they need for life. Theoretically, the efficiency promoted/fueled by new technology enables people share more time for leisure purpose. Technology also could create more entertainment means by which people can relax themselves in spare time. However, saving time for people to enjoy more leisure activities is by no means the primary goal of technological advancement, for the main destination of human beings is not amusement and complete leisure. The development of technology should be aimed at resolving pragmatic problems and help human beings to achieve more adaptive strategies against the pressure from the environment.
Human beings are facing abundant/ a mass of more serious issues than the lack of leisure time, and technological advancement is the major strategy to resole problems on such serious aspects. If fact, practical/ pragmatic requirements are the primary motivation of technological renovation. We need new technology on agriculture and breeding to yield more food to raise more population and improve their nutritional condition; we need new biotechnology and medical facilities to predict, prevent and curve diseases; we develop chemical and manufacture technology to produce manifold products making our life more convenient; we regenerate computer technology and information system to enhance the management of the economic and social activities; and advancement of high technology provide the society more and clean energy to fuel the function of the whole society; technology also help human beings to live and develop in a more sustainable manner. All of the aforementioned issues are far more important than people's leisure time.
Admittedly, improving efficiency is necessary for human productive activities, but it is only one aspect of the whole matter, and increasing leisure time is only one byproduct of the improvement of people's efficiency. As the matter of fact, sometimes, increased efficiency do not consequently lead to more leisure time. Through the long history of technological development, the society has been long furnished the ability to produce enough food and daily products for it's basic function to exist with little work time of each social member, why there are so many people, exactly, most of the people always keep busy in work and some of them could not get a happy life yet? From my point of view, on the one hand, it because we always meet new serious problems in the process of social development, and human beings need keep evolving to be more adaptive to the environment. On the other hand, the human nature of greed and the undue organization of the society have limited the effort of increasing efficiency on saving time for leisure life. As people find they can produce more in certain time, their cupidity would urge them to work longer to gain more products. Moreover, a better social organization would prevent intense exploitation and abate people's greed, which would indeed make everyone has more leisure time.
Empirically, the far-reaching advancement of technology surely has not give people more leisure time than their more primitive ancestors. Technology has not and should not aim at the target of increasing people's leisure time. It has more important and sublime objective/goal, that is to provide safe and comfortable life of people and to ensure the continuity and prosperity of human culture.
technological singularity.
Re: The primary goal of technological advancement should
Neoquixote wrote:The primary goal of technological advancement should be to increase people's efficiency so that everyone has more leisure time......
............Empirically, the far-reaching advancement of technology surely has not give people more leisure time than their more primitive ancestors. Technology has not and should not aim at the target of increasing people?s leisure time. It has more important and sublime objective/goal, that is to provide safe and comfortable life of people and to ensure the continuity and prosperity of human culture.
Lets be serious here, the goal of corporate supported technological advancement is asymptotic increase in corporate wealth.
Any leisure friendly 'spinoff' is purely coincidental.
Until the myth of 'progress', and the spectre of 'greed' are annihilated, there will be no time to sit and rest.
oh, by the way 'New Don" welcome to a2k - good topic, should be interesting.....
epic wrote:technological singularity.
excellent - into which all 'value' is sucked, to be lost forever!
welcome too! Epic
BoGoWo, you and NeoDon are both right. Your cynical perspective is right on. Coroporations produce profits, not products (or at least the latter is incidental). But NeoQuixote is also right in that the ultimate goal of technological advancement SHOULD be the betterment of humankind. We should be creating mechanical slaves to exploit without guilt. Then, perhaps, we might have enough leisure time to be as culturally inventive and productive as was slave-based Greek society..
hei pals
thank you for your comment, i am a greenhorn, here is such a cool forum.
JLNobody wrote:BoGoWo, you and NeoDon are both right. Your cynical perspective is right on. Coroporations produce profits, not products (or at least the latter is incidental). But NeoQuixote is also right in that the ultimate goal of technological advancement SHOULD be the betterment of humankind. We should be creating mechanical slaves to exploit without guilt. Then, perhaps, we might have enough leisure time to be as culturally inventive and productive as was slave-based Greek society..
right in theory jlN; but when the mechanical 'slaves' are in place, the time will have come to look at their 'rights.
the slaves of which you speak are actually the next iteration in the now 'voluntary' (human based) process of 'evolution'.
would you not confer a full spectrum of rights on your children?
Birth rates need to be reduced, and an economic model created that doesn't rely on endless growth in a finite and fragile system.
Technology is our modern salvation, we've left the spiritual behind and now give our energies to the material and we will attempt to exhaust this paradigm despite the stupidity that will entail.
here, here David, agreed!
BoGoWo, I forgot about your imaginative futuristic mind. Have you read, John Casti's "The Camabridge Quintet? It's a fascinating hypothetical discussion by a group of great thinkers (C.P. Snow, Wittgenstein, Haldane, Turing and Schrodinger) debating the theoretical possibility of "thinking" machines. If that should happen--the Frankensteinian creation of machines that REALLY think--then we would, as you suggest, eventually have the problem of their "rights." After all, the materialists among us would argue that we, ourselves, are little more than "soft" or "juicy" machines. But I cannot for the life of me worry about the rights of automobiles, food processors, and even my PC.
David Henry, I agree that we have "left the spiritual behind and now give our energies to the material...." But that was not necessary. We could have maintained and developed our spirituality while at the same time advanced our technological control over situations. My regret is that we have chosen to adopt a market mentality (consumerism), a cultural obsession with pursuing things we do not really need, but which we have been taught to want. And underlying our market mentality is the insatiable GREED of the producer/vendor class.
BoGoWo wrote:here, here David, agreed!
I'm glad you agree....you might be a rare individual who is wise rather than heavily brainwashed and addicted to this paradigm.
Be sure that humanity will exhaust this paradigm and that the truthful assertions of a small minority cannot overcome the march of billions.
I express the truth for cathartic purposes, I don't think that I can have any significant impact.
Quote: We could have maintained and developed our spirituality while at the same time advanced our technological control over situations. My regret is that we have chosen to adopt a market mentality (consumerism), a cultural obsession with pursuing things we do not really need, but which we have been taught to want. And underlying our market mentality is the insatiable GREED of the producer/vendor class.
JLN.
Not really, we rejected the spiritual realm after the rise of science, and have placed our energies into technological salvation...IOW, this is what is meaningful to people, the excitement of more progress where progress equates to ever increasing technological advancement.
The problem is that as we "progress" things seem to be getting worse globally, ie, the continual scientific warnings about climate and enviornment in general+the desire of the US war hawks to kill to ensure the economic model that is responsible for the destruction continues{US military are the worlds largest polluters and reliant on fossil fuels}.
[right in theory jlN; but when the mechanical 'slaves' are in place, the time will have come to look at their 'rights.
the slaves of which you speak are actually the next iteration in the now 'voluntary' (human based) process of 'evolution'.
would you not confer a full spectrum of rights on your children?.[/quote]
I THINK the consideration of their "right" is only one of the problems, if the mechanical 'slaves' become really advanced, we may find that they are powerful competitors for resources to we human beings, and maybe evolution would select them as more adaptive "species" to preempt homo sapiens as the master of this planet.
JLNobody wrote:......John Casti's "The Camabridge Quintet? .........
........David Henry, I agree that we have "left the spiritual behind and now give our energies to the material...." But that was not necessary. We could have maintained and developed our spirituality while at the same time advanced our technological control over situations. My regret is that we have chosen to adopt a market mentality (consumerism), a cultural obsession with pursuing things we do not really need, but which we have been taught to want. And underlying our market mentality is the insatiable GREED of the producer/vendor class.
reference noted jlN
(no, i haven't read it)
i see the 'natural' process of evolution as over; we no longer have the benefit of eons to adapt to changes in our environment that we ourselves are effecting. we must now entertain the project of becoming 'creators', and begin to design our replacements.
questions such as will they be 'wetware' combining biological components with more robust mechanical parts, or will the essence of 'life' dissolve digitally into an interconnected 'hive' of intelligences meshed together, and immortal.
the question of spirituality though somewhat mute will in essence reduce to the desentimentalization of an broad ethical/moral view of the universe, and our place in it. no deities, no fuss!
Given that technology is a human pursuit and given that human activity is natural and hence subject to the pressures of evolution, and given that evolution provides survival advantages to the adaptable; then technology is a tool for advancing the survival of humans.
Leisure time has never been shown to enhance survival of a species, doesn't mean it couldn't, just that there's no evidence to support that assertion.
The last 50 years have been spent improving the quality of life among humans, the next 50 years will be spent finding places for people to live and keeping them alive.
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