I’ve had several conversations recently in which people expressed the opinion that technologies which rely on electricity are somehow less robust than technologies which do not. For example, your computer screen is only useful if there is a supply of electric power. By contrast, drawing a message in the dirt with a stick is something you can do even if all the electrical power in the world goes away.
So the argument, as I understand it, is that on some elemental scale text on a computer screen is somehow less real and robust, whereas drawing with a stick is more real and robust. But it seems to me that there is something flawed about this way of looking at things: “Powered by electricity” is a rather arbitrary place to draw the line.
Yes, it’s true, without electricity there are no computer screens. Yet without written language there is no writing with a stick. And written language is the far more elaborate and advanced technology than mere electrical power. We take written communication for granted because we are used to it. But it is the outcome of centuries of cultural evolution. And without the continuous influence of culture, that evolution could easily be lost.
It would take only a generation or two, in the wake of some vast disaster, for the world to become plunged into illiteracy. It might then take centuries before written language again evolves to its current level.
So maybe we shouldn’t be worrying so much about our machines being vulnerable to becoming unplugged. Maybe we should be worried about our culture being vulnerable to becoming unplugged.
Very good example of generational amnesia… One generation’s technological wonder is the next’s tool, the next’s plaything, and by a few generations since it’s inception it is a fact of life, that many no longer understand the workings of (but use on a daily basis)… Look at nuclear technology for another clear example. The history of technology is as long as our own, and I wonder if some day we will no longer understand how our languages developed, or our computers came to be.
mmh, I get the point but I’m not sure the context is right. When a comparison is made between the plugged computer and the stick on the sand we hold for granted, either consciously or not, this shared technology the language represents. In this context the stick beat the bits in term of ‘expected’ avaibility in our actual known reality (even if it lost in so many regards). Actually it is yet partially true as it depends on where we stand : being ashore the Baikal lake or atop Taipei 101 give us different technological prospect.
But, as always, it may just be a question of context.