h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Should we go back to simpler times? An interesting question. Maybe if someone could tell me when they were, I could form a stronger opinion on them. We could go back to 80 years to the 1920's. Any thing over 50 miles was considered long distance travel and diseases that we now take for granted that we won't get were still abundant.

How about the wild west of North America. Not nearly as romantic as Hollywood likes paint it to be. Rusty guns, death by dysentery, influenza, tuberculosis, or polio. Poor hygiene, and rotting teeth that are pulled with out the pleasure of novocaine. Not to mention 12 hour days of backbreaking work to support a life expectancy of what, 50?

Let me go a little further back, the Colonial times. Even less in the way of medical or dental care. You were sown into your underwear in the fall and not cut out until spring. Those little flaps were put into the back for a reason. I don't even want to thank about the smell.

I know technology has a high price. We advance more every decade than we did in the hundred years previous. There is certainly risk inherent in such rapid advance, a lot of it. Yes we could destroy the world five times over in nearly the blink of an eye. But we also have nuclear medicine. Our technology has advanced our life span from 55 to 65 to 100 or more. A recent medical and technological conference has suggested that our generation, (people currently in their 30's) can expect to live past 100, maybe to 125 with quality of life. Our children and our grandchildren 150 to 200. I think just the medical advances alone are worth the risk. We have found cures for diseases and adverted plagues, well I could go on and on with the list, but I'm sure everyone knows the medical advances of the last 50 years.

Then there are the advances in architecture, travel, communication, commerce, again the list goes on. Yes there is a risk of alienation from society, but there is also the ease of planing dinners with a dozen friends at once via email. Keeping in touch with a sibling a half a country away for pennies a minute. Again worth the risk.

As for a simpler life. Until they invent a way to teleport goods straight from the warehouse to your home, it really doesn't get much simpler.

To paraphrase, I think it was Einstein. The greatest risk of technology is that it will grow faster than our humanity. That is the risk we face. The risk we need to face as a community. The global community that our technology allows us to be.

Thanks for sticking it out to the end. I need an

I agree with a lot of what you have written, yes you are right we have extended the span of life we can expect and eradicated many diseases. Lets not forget though that we now have newer diseases and some of the old ones are returning as we produce resistant bugs due to the overprescribing of antibiotics. Life is easier with labour saving devices but I do have one concern, should it not all be about the quality of life not the quantity? Do we really have more time to enjoy the simpler pleasures, many of which are dying out? Can we wander safely around our technologically advanced world as easy as we could forty years ago? I am sure I had more freedom back then as a child than my children and the children of today have. I am not really sure of the answer, I tend to believe we have lost just as much as we have gained. In other words the status quo has been preserved in change.
Now I'm off for a and a lie down after all these profound thoughts

True technology has bought on many greatr things. For us Humans but it is thus our downfall. X-Boxes, Playstations, Gamecubes, TV, Computers, Fast Internet Access all alienate us from society, also look at the evil things that technology has allowed some rather nasty people to do:

Make Child Porn, Guns, Killing People, Drug Selling all over the internet.

Easy and simply fast and with new mobile internet its going to be harder to catch these bastards.

So, there must be a fine balance between technology and Humans using it and what they use it for.

Thank you. I am Jimmy S

and that was my Two Pence.

I don't think that the society we're in is directly a product of the technology that we have developed. In fact I don't even think most of society was ever involved in any of the development anyway.

I think the two main problems which remain unsolved are:

1) Mortality.
2) What to actually do with your life.

I doubt the first will ever be solved by medical science, and that's not a entirely bad thing. As for the second in the past it's been eclipsed by need to fight off wild animals and provide the next meal. As we become more developed we seem to be using our excess time and energy to make, buy, sell and market crap to eachother, as well as treating eachother like shit. Surely this can't have been a deliberate choice by anyone.

For example, as a society we hate talking to call centres and no one likes working in them, but we have loads of them. Nobody likes banks, but we have them too. What's it all about?

I'm not sure that I would blame technology for the evil's of the world. Well maybe the call centers. I've had this discussion with friends, is there more evil in the world to day? Child porn, highway snipers... the list goes on. But I don't think the world is more evil. I just think the media has made us more aware of it. Watching the nightly news makes you feel like this stuff happens right in you own backyard, but it doesn't. It happens through out the world and then the media gathers it all together and then floods it all into our living rooms each night at dinner time. I think this evil has always been a part of humanity. Yes technology has made it easier for them to perpetrate their evil, but they would find a way to do their evil without technology. They always have. They always will.

You're right. We need to make sure that our humanity and morality advance at the same rate as our technology. But we shouldn't let fear of what we might find stop us from looking. Cheers

Alright. If anyone wants to go back to "simpler and better" times, I'll go and get you a tent. You can take with you what would probably be in a pre-civilisation Nomad's belongings and I'll be timing how long it is before you come crawling back begging for the things that you missed about our technologically civilised world. I'd say that most people will be back after about a week.