And things were never the same again has a pretty broad range, from a barely noticeable daily event to an event in which all life ends (and not just as we know it)
I am expecting the changes that have already begun to culminate, to do so in or around 2030 to 2050, and do so in a way that not only would a person of today not recognize life at that time, but that he would not even recognize what will be LIFE (as in, he will not know what is alive or not). Yet, this still falls under the umbra of And things were never the same again
My point was meant to illustrate that the changes which human life have been going through have been becoming more and more profound, leading up to a change which is really beyond the ability of anyone to describe.
My point was meant to illustrate that the changes which human life have been going through have been becoming more and more profound
I don’t feel my life changing profoundly. In fact the only major change in my lifetime was computers/cellphones/Internet. We’re mostly over the hump of that change now (quick, name some revolutionary advances in the last 5 years), and anyway it’s tiny compared to electricity or cars. Roughly comparable to telephones and TV, at most. (It would be crazy to claim that a mobile phone is further from a regular phone than a regular phone is from no phone at all, ditto for Internet versus TV.) Do you have this feeling of accelerating change? What are the reasons for it?
I think smartphones are a pretty profound change. There are not really any revolutionary new technologies involved but combining existing technologies like a web browser, GPS, decent amounts of storage and computing power into a completely portable device that you always have with you makes for a fairly significant development. My iPhone has probably had more impact on my day to day activities than any other technological development of the last 10 years.
Indeed, it’s rather hard to give an objective definition of what constitutes a ‘revolutionary’ advance. I’d take issue with this as well:
It would be crazy to claim that a mobile phone is further from a regular phone than a regular phone is from no phone at all, ditto for Internet versus TV.
But it’s not like there’s some obvious objective metric of ‘distance’ between technologies in this context. As one example of how you could argue mobile phones are more revolutionary than land lines, in much of the developing world the infrastructure for widespread usage of land lines was never built due to problems with governments and social structure but many developing countries are seeing extremely rapid adoption of mobile phones which have simpler infrastructure requirements. In these countries mobile phones are proving more revolutionary than land lines ever were.
I’d also very much dispute the claim that the advance from no TV to TV is more revolutionary than the advance from TV to the Internet. I don’t think it makes much sense to even make the comparison.
I think you miss my point.
And things were never the same again has a pretty broad range, from a barely noticeable daily event to an event in which all life ends (and not just as we know it)
I am expecting the changes that have already begun to culminate, to do so in or around 2030 to 2050, and do so in a way that not only would a person of today not recognize life at that time, but that he would not even recognize what will be LIFE (as in, he will not know what is alive or not). Yet, this still falls under the umbra of And things were never the same again
My point was meant to illustrate that the changes which human life have been going through have been becoming more and more profound, leading up to a change which is really beyond the ability of anyone to describe.
I don’t feel my life changing profoundly. In fact the only major change in my lifetime was computers/cellphones/Internet. We’re mostly over the hump of that change now (quick, name some revolutionary advances in the last 5 years), and anyway it’s tiny compared to electricity or cars. Roughly comparable to telephones and TV, at most. (It would be crazy to claim that a mobile phone is further from a regular phone than a regular phone is from no phone at all, ditto for Internet versus TV.) Do you have this feeling of accelerating change? What are the reasons for it?
I think smartphones are a pretty profound change. There are not really any revolutionary new technologies involved but combining existing technologies like a web browser, GPS, decent amounts of storage and computing power into a completely portable device that you always have with you makes for a fairly significant development. My iPhone has probably had more impact on my day to day activities than any other technological development of the last 10 years.
I was going to say the same thing, though it’s hard to quantify ‘revolutionary’.
Indeed, it’s rather hard to give an objective definition of what constitutes a ‘revolutionary’ advance. I’d take issue with this as well:
But it’s not like there’s some obvious objective metric of ‘distance’ between technologies in this context. As one example of how you could argue mobile phones are more revolutionary than land lines, in much of the developing world the infrastructure for widespread usage of land lines was never built due to problems with governments and social structure but many developing countries are seeing extremely rapid adoption of mobile phones which have simpler infrastructure requirements. In these countries mobile phones are proving more revolutionary than land lines ever were.
I’d also very much dispute the claim that the advance from no TV to TV is more revolutionary than the advance from TV to the Internet. I don’t think it makes much sense to even make the comparison.
I didn’t mean any one life (such as your life), but human life as in the trajectory of the sum total of human experience.