“Why does this magnificent applied science which saves work and makes life easier bring us so little happiness? The simple answer: because we have not yet learned to make sensible use of it.”
So responded Albert E to some question meant to challenge the role of science and technology, with a dash of insulting conspicuous consumerism. While writing a post on gadgets during the gadget buying season (AKA, “Da Holidays”) this kind of idea sprang up several times, but it deserved its own time and space to unfold, which brings us to now. Personally I have made it clear that I love a proper dose of conspicuous consumerism, providing one knows the art and technique behind the activity. When you live just to accumulate stuff or worse, to compete for the most stuff bought so the only use the stuff really has is fulfilled in the act of buying, displaying and storing, you really aren’t living. In there somewhere it is implicit that a little acquiring of stuff can be great, too much almost by definition can’t work. Stuff can be the spice but not the substance.
That’s all great, but why is that? Is the answer to making the “sensible use” of which the Professor spoke simply keeping it to a low dose, or must it stay to a low dose only because we haven’t found a sensible use? I propose the second choice is the answer.
Now proposing is great, if you get down on one knee, do it with style and grace, and know what you’re getting into, but it shouldn’t be done without good reason. Fortunately, I have one. If we haven’t made sensible use yet, we need answers. And here is an important lesson about answers: Answers are never the answer, good questions are. If you need a solution, formulate the right question and the rest is just mop up duty.
So the question to the answer would be “what would be a sensible use?” and to lead us to that we can ask “is there an intrinsic reason that applied science doesn’t seem to lead to sensible use directly?”
Let u break down the elements to answer the second question first. Living beings make technology for their own purposes, yet this technology somehow can’t increase their perceived quality of life. We know the technology does it’s jobs, it keeps us fed, clean, warm, healthy, mobile, entertained, safer than we were living in the wild and it can even give us emotional boosts directly to our egos when it makes us look good or we can show it off. A conversation piece is not just about conversation, it’s about being the center of interest by having the conversation piece! Humans are happier when hunger turns to fullness, boredom turns to interest, cold turns to cozy or feeling outcast turns to gaining (positive) attention. Obviously each individual piece of technology can make us happy. Yet people with constant doses of this happiness aren’t necessarily happy. What gives?
We can conclude it’s not the fault of our technology, it’s everything it is supposed to be. Ahh, but the other side of the equation; living beings. Technology is designed for a purpose, life adapts to an environment. Life needs a challenge. Granted, with too much of a challenge life withers, but with too little it becomes a couch potato and withers faster, even without the technology to literally provide the couch. So here’s the thing: There you were, a fairly content species with short but challenging lives and you came up with a little technology to extend and improve those lives. Then you made so much technology that it’s not just the clothes you covered yourself with and the spear you carried, it’s the world. You went and built an infrastructure, and you keep changing it. Your ancestors took millennia to adapt to small changes in their worlds, you deal with bigger changes every decade. Each piece of technology can make you happy, but even the work saving machines add up to a changing world you can’t adapt to quickly enough. Of course you’re not happy dealing with it. Sure, if you could have IPods to bring your own little comfort zone with you and the internet to tell you what you need to know it’s great, but when everyone else has these same things you have to deal information overload and other people being rude because they’re lost in their worlds just as you are in yours, so of course you have to get more lost to ignore them but you can’t because your cell phone keeps you available and…
The answer to the question is obvious: We have used the applied science properly for specific purposes, but until an infrastructure so advanced exists that it can no longer be significantly altered by new pieces of technology within it, and people have had enough time to adapt to this infrastructure, technology will continue to work in the small picture and fail in the big picture. Or, to quote (loosely) Ricardo Montalban, “Kirk, your technology has advanced, but man is the the same. But when you change man, ahh…” So the problem is not in our technology, but in ourselves, we should look to improve us once in a while. Or just get some soft Corinthian leather to sit in for a nice drive.
About the title: Almost a John Lennon quote, and guns are prime examples of technology that serves a purpose and feeds people’s egos to the point of changing their self image. However, the Professor is not enamored of gadgets of violence so we looked for a good replacement word. We considered quoting that great philosopher, statesman and dog of the people, Snoopy and use “warm puppy,” but then who can resist glub. It not only is a great word for some new wonder product, it is the right word if you’re up on your trivia. If not, watch “Take The Money and Run,” the bank robbing scene with the badly written note!
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