RV Canal Sidebank
14:48 16o feels like 10
28km WSW gusts 50
Wet ~1mm avg
Wettest July On record.
Today as I venture through the valley, I shall ponder a question I was asked some time ago. I made a comment that the endless development of technology is a waste; devices and things are near perfect as they are. My converser asked if that implied that a Ford Mondeo from 30 years ago was perfect. I take a walk and contemplate that now.
As I rove in this wet July, the ground underfoot is more like that of February or March. This has its advantages though, as it means that I practically have the place to myself. Plenty of time to stop and stare at such things as mushrooms and trees.
As I capture images of these spectacular lifeforms, I marvel at their apparent simplicity and wonder if they have simplified themselves over millions of years. We humans have convinced ourselves that complexity is good; is it? Still, I marvel at the ability of the device in my hand that allows me to record scenes from my reality and share them with everyone. The dream tool for the dreamer. I’ve often marveled at how I can walk and write at the same time, something so simple that was impossible for the great writers.
The Dreamer
The inventor of such tools is a dreamer. That dreamer becomes the innovator. Massive innovation becomes narrow-focused advanced technology, leading to a rapid rate of change, higher prices, and more money. A 65 billion per quarter, trillion-dollar company, as powerful as a nation, with turnovers as big as economies; an unstoppable machine churning out endless refinements of the same product but no longer innovating and certainly no longer dreaming. (They often go asleep e.g a Bank)
But on the upside, I get a camera in my pocket that captures unbelievable detail. And a car under my butt that drives itself with a third eye avoiding collisions. Useful stuff like that. And un-useful stuff like a picture of the moon that’s ‘enhanced’ with external pre-known data from other pictures of the moon. I mentioned they often go asleep. But maybe it’s a moonshot! We’ll see.
We went from being excited about taking a pixilated photo on a phone 10 years ago to 8000-pixel cinema-quality video on a device we still call a phone. So look at a photo, a video. It’s thousands of times better than 10 years ago, quality-wise. Do we need to keep making better and better quality cameras now?
If we keep expelling energy on newer and newer cameras and better and better cars, then we’ll forget how to drive, (just like none of us can ride a horse) and all we’ll have is a giant live enhanced closeup video of the moon playing on our the giant screens on the roofs of our cars as we get transported by our horseless carriage in a state of sleep.
This thought leads me to thinking of early science fiction stories such as ‘the journey to the Center of the Earth’ and ‘from the earth to the moon’ by Jules Verne. He imagined such devices. Devices that could see long distance like the surface of the moon, and this was fantasy to be in awe of or to be laughed at. His designs were of the 19th century. Imagine an 1800s steelworks telescope, bearded men on earth watching a guy walking around on the moon surface. Maybe that’s where we are heading. And maybe we’ll have a phone that can zoom live to its surface.
Remarkably, my wandering has led me to an exhibition showcasing the works of Jules Verne.
Maybe space tourism may have some lunatics on the moon very soon. The word derives from lunaticus meaning “of the moon” or “moonstruck”. Wow, what an achievement, current-day lunies taking a moonshot put the lunatics on the moon, as we watch live on super ultra zoom, riding in our horseless carriages with their nonexistent driver (AI to you and me), eventually transporting you across the galaxy. Don’t forget to pick up an unfortunate hitchhiker!
Ford Mondeo
Is it a perfect car? Yes / No
Yes, for three decades that platform of the car brought us everywhere. We didn’t have a problem with it then. In fact, owners of the new car opened the door and got the same feeling 30 years ago as they do now and as they did 30 years before that. But then we keep getting newer and newer Mondeos, and eventually all you have is nice plastic bumpers, a marginally more efficient engine, and it’ll connect to your phone. Shinier and shinier things, but no real innovation. Just like the phone, once the Mondeo turns into a cash cow, that’s where the innovation stops. It’s at essence the same as it was 30 years ago, 10% better, 90% shinier.
Is it a perfect car? Yes / No
No, please make it emissionless and never needs fixing, 100% free energy source, 100% safe for everyone, 100% reusable. Here within is the problem. On one hand, the technology we have is adequate. On the other, it’s not. The problem I see is when the dreamer becomes owned by the need to become the dominant force in terms of money, thus creating similar competitors, thus putting strain on everything, depleting natural resources, creating pressure cooker environments for humans to work in, low quality of life, high income, high stress, high anxiety. Walking around because the roads are too crowded, with this overpowered device in my pocket. This problem will continue to plague technological development.
Stay a dreamer
How about forgetting all the shiny bumper ‘innovation’, don’t waste a lot of money making me the GLXyz version 14. Just give me a simple device that works, is easy and cheap to fix by and keeps going for 50 years. No problem. I’m willing to bet the energy savings on having a 50-year rolling fleet of transport vehicles would save a ton of energy. But we all get stuck in this narrow-focused sliver that we call our reality. So stop spending the budget of a country on marketing to manipulate the psychology of a human to convince them they need more and more layers of paint on their cars, homes, and faces. Spend that money on real innovation. Slower rate of innovation of phones and cars. Higher rate of development on other products like health. Imagine the energy of the two big phone manufacturers, or car manufacturers, pouring resources into a focused outcome in health and education?
I do not possess the definitive answer, but it does strike me that humans are inherently complex creatures who create intricate systems and celebrate this complexity. On the other hand, nature seems to follow a path of simplification, utilizing fewer components, fewer resources, and yet it remarkably prevails and dominates beautifully.
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