Will points to a hilarious bit on how people take technology for granted; Bobvis opines on the supposedly meaningless advance of shaving technology.
I put myself somewhere in between the two beliefs.
First of all, yes, there is “technology” that is amazing. The fact that humans, in the last century, crafted devices to do everything from imitating birds to automating all sorts of tasks (such as, among other things, slicing bread) should indeed be amazing. On the other hand, an equally amazing amount of technological “advances” are barely advances and are merely the result of the saner portions of the population taking the logical next step, time and again. For one example, the cellular phone - occasionally referred to as a “technological marvel” and descending from the minds of people who watched a lot of Star Trek when they were younger - is not a fantastical creation, but the mere combination of a number of already-existing technologies (voice encoding and radio transmission).
At the same time, so much “time-saving” has been accomplished, and people are so “connected”, that the idea of waiting (or, to use the language of the rant above, not being an impatient brat) has seemed to vanish entirely.
Recently, I had occasion to go a couple weeks without power at my house. Certain things (wash) were annoying. Certain things weren’t available. I wouldn’t want to live like it permanently.
On the other hand… I did start taking a number of things a bit slower. Maybe there’s something to being a little less “connected” in one’s life.
I don’t view any of these beliefs as incompatible.
The point I was trying to make on my post is that there are certain areas of our lives that are *relatively* impervious to improvement. There are technologies that perhaps 5% better than they were a decade ago. Take a look at how much more efficient an electric engine is today than it was 10 years ago or even 20 years ago. My point was only that we do not face exponential improvements in all technical areas simultaneously. However, public perception is that we do.
I have all the sympathy in the world for Louis CK who says we should take a breath and realize how amazing certain technologies are. I am not saying that electric motors aren’t amazing thing. That you can just stick something into a wall and next thing you know you have something spinning around like crazy is terrific. At a time it would have been considered magical, and it still seems that way to children who might encounter them for the first time.
At the same time, you shouldn’t expect electric motors to also be able to make you breakfast 20 years from now.
Comment by bobvis — November 15, 2008 @ 8:21 am
Hey Trumwill–off topic, but I thought I’d ask since it’ll just get lost at Half Sigma–what’s this bit about female doctors marrying male nerds? You mentioned it and I have seen it once or twice; what’s up with that? Given that many ex-female nerds wind up in medical school (more money more human contact than enginerding), maybe they’re just marrying their ‘type’?
Comment by SFG — November 16, 2008 @ 12:39 pm
er, that should be female ex-nerds. We’re talking about women who become less nerdy, not nerdy transsexuals.
Comment by SFG — November 16, 2008 @ 12:40 pm
I’m actually glad you asked, SFG. I’d been meaning to post on that. Come back later in the week and I should have something up.
What? You didn’t expect me to not to try to milk a little traffic out of it, did you? Actually, I want to get more information from the wife to make sure I got it right.
Comment by trumwill — November 16, 2008 @ 3:31 pm
but I thought I’d ask since it’ll just get lost at Half Sigma
Everything gets lost there now. It’s why I stopped bothering commenting there.
Comment by David Alexander — November 16, 2008 @ 5:03 pm
Do you mean “lost” as in that it elicits no response or are comments actually being gobbled up by HS or Typepad?
Comment by trumwill — November 16, 2008 @ 5:25 pm
No response. He used to find interesting things with the General Social Survey but now it’s all politics, and boring politics like Sarah Palin being stupid. If I want right-wing blogging I can get it at Little Green Footballs.
Besides, he completely ignores that the Republican party needs evangelicals to win…
Although his position as a Jewish sort-of white nationalist libertarian populist is kind of funny. Not actually internally inconsistent, simply an odd juxtaposition.
I mean, I sort of agree with the race realists on an empirical basis but their antagonism kind of turns me off. It’s fun and politically incorrect (why do you think I won’t give my real name or what I do for a living?) to speculate about Jews’ verbal smarts leading them to the left but there are too many two-line lame snarky remarks.
Comment by SFG — November 16, 2008 @ 6:36 pm
Do you mean “lost” as in that it elicits no response
As SFG stated, no response. His place was once a fun place where you could find some reasonable, yet rebellious discourse about our society and some mockery of the SWPL world, but it’s for all intents and purposes, it’s turned into a third rate version of Steve Sailor’s place.
Comment by David Alexander — November 16, 2008 @ 7:35 pm
I don’t know that the discourse at HS has ever been reasonable. I do think that it used to be more interesting. There really isn’t a whole lot that I read there that I am not seeing elsewhere (Palin is stupid, the GOP needs to ditch pro-lifers, etc). Maybe it’s one of those cases where he’s run out of new things to say. It seems that a lot of what he’s writing says something along the lines of “further evidence of {fill in theory here}.
I can sympathize, actually. It seems to me that you can really only write a thinker blog for so wrong before you run out of things to say where you’re not simply repeating yourself or simply fitting whatever is going on in the world to what you’ve already said.
Comment by trumwill — November 16, 2008 @ 11:38 pm
“More evidence of ____” where ____ has generated comments in the past tends to get traffic. There are plenty of blogs that have run out of things to say but are still A-list blogs. Not everyone values novelty all that much.
Comment by Bobvis — November 17, 2008 @ 6:07 am