Response to "Spread of Technology"

After looking the blog posts of my classmates I found that the post by Zach concerning technological studies was particularly interesting.

In his post, he discusses how science in recent years seems to be less focused on finding solutions to the issues that are plaguing our society today, and instead more interested in fulfilling the dreams of science fiction. He argues that the opposite should be true, and that we should save science-for-enjoyment for after our problems have been solved. I, however, must disagree.

The reason I have to conflict with this view comes down to two things, first of which being that I very much doubt that there will be a time when there is nothing that we as a people feel a great deal of worry about and therefore have a need to dedicate a large amount of scientific effort to. You may call me a pessimist for this, but as history has progressed and the advancement of technology has accelerated, we have yet to see problems disappear without being replaced with new, just as prominent problems.

The second reason for my disagreement is that, as I see it, the progression of science today is simply an accelerated image of how science has progressed in the past. Let me explain.

I am of the belief that scientific study and discovery can be split into three categories.

The first category is the ISSUE category. It describes scientific study that is done to resolve issues that are urgent to society in the corresponding age. Doctors, for example, are as a rule, always included in the urgent category, and due to the horrible conditions of our roads and bridges, civil and traffic engineers are included in the ISSUE category in our present age.

The second is the COOL category. It describes science done to discover something nifty or useful, though not completely useful to the overall society. Sticky notes were a cool discovery. Rubber, was a cool discovery. e = mc^2 even, was a cool discovery.

The biggest difference between an ISSUE discovery and a COOL discovery is that an issue discovery is searched out specifically because it is useful, while on the other hand, a COOL discovery is searched out for the gratification of the curious scientist, and only has a chance of becoming a part of ISSUE science after it's discovery.

Now, I think of the greatest example of a COOL inventor whose inventions have become ISSUES as Thomas Edison. Edison is well known for inventing the bulb and the motion picture camera. Now, when he was working on them, pursuing a career in medicine probably would have been seen as more profitable to society than being an inventor. However, look at the world now. The light bulb is a near necessity in western society, and the motion picture camera served as the basis for newer and better recording devices, which have likewise become necessities of the reporting industry.

We can even look at the communicators from star trek. Communication had been working perfectly fine, but someone said, "Hey, that's convenient, lets spend some time working on that". Today, land-line has by-and-large given way to the cell phones. And sure, a phone can't cure cancer, but what it can do is give you access to a doctor if you are hurt out on the street, and help you look up information for certain symptoms when you think you might be having a health problem, or look up instructions on how to live more actively and safely, or help you to find ways to reach out to others.

What I'm basically trying to say is - don't be too dismissive of these "toys", as they can be quite a bit more useful than you think. The atomic bomb certainly taught Einstein that some toys can come with a bang. After all, who knows when you may need a Lightsaber in the emergency room?

Response to "Full Life?"

Connor Hagan has written a very interesting post concerning the nature of a full life. After presenting his argument, his final conclusion was that there was no definite, overreaching definition of a "full life".

I fully agree with this sentiment, and it our inability to create a universal definition for the full life which, in my opinion, makes the idea so great.

As with many things, happiness is a matter of personal perception. We might say that this is due to the complex and individual nature of happiness, but even color, which is considered to be a fairly follow concrete laws, can vary between individuals, with or without eyesight conditions. If something so simple as color does not always have a true definition, then it would be almost impossible that a full life would.

And this is where the spice of life comes in. I don't think it's a good idea to spend time trying to figure out what the definition of a full life is. Instead, I think we should ask what our individual full life looks like. To find that joy that turns each of us into colorblind fools, in my opinion, is a much more worthwhile pursuit.