Ponderings on humans and techology
Well, this is my second draft, as my oh-so wonderful Firefox spell checking extension crashed the browser.
It all started out when I noticed my glasses were dirty. This got me thinking about lasik/Inter-ocular lens implantation, and how much I would like be able to see without corrective vision. But even with corrected vision, there will be a point where aging will make my eyes inflexible enough to require reading glasses, as my dad holding menus far away to determine what to order can attest.
But why do the eyes age so? In fact, a damn lot of the human body degrades with age. From what I have learned, its probably from natural selection in pre-historic times. Once upon a dark and grim time, or so I picture, all that mattered is pumping out rugrats before dying, and maybe providing for them so they can in turn pump some out (and its amusing how many in my high school class still seem to subscribe to this model). Natural selection, being the powerful force that it is, led to the proliferation of survival traits resulting in early breeding, probably at the detriment to longevity. In fact, it might have been an advantage for someone to kick the bucket (to the offspring), once the offspring are mature. Then they don't have to compete with their parental units for food, and the parental units are obsolete once they can't breed anyway.
In modern times the requirements of education, skills, and knowledge to flourish in society requires a long learning period. So long in fact, that it might exceed pre-history death times (well... I vaguely think they were around 30). This creates a conflict where when people are ready to start contributing significantly, their bodies are on the decline. This problem leads me to the disturbing thought that since the learning period is so constrained by lifespan, there will be a point where even an expert in a field has to take the foundations on faith. And it seems once we are disconnected from the knowledge path leading up to a technology, there is suddenly a huge cliff to fall off of, if something were to interrupt our current technology. Of course, this has been dealt with in many a SciFi book, and some even suggest that their may be rise and fall cycles of civilization.
The way I see it, several things can happen. We could artificially increase the learning rate, perhaps an external (to the biological brain) knowledge repository. We could drastically increase life span (undoing pre-history selection), allowing plenty of time to learn. Or we could crash hard and have to start over, which doesn't sound like much fun.
Anyway, there you go. I think my second draft is much more coherent.
"Ghost in the Shell - Stand Alone Complex - OP - Inner Universe"
It all started out when I noticed my glasses were dirty. This got me thinking about lasik/Inter-ocular lens implantation, and how much I would like be able to see without corrective vision. But even with corrected vision, there will be a point where aging will make my eyes inflexible enough to require reading glasses, as my dad holding menus far away to determine what to order can attest.
But why do the eyes age so? In fact, a damn lot of the human body degrades with age. From what I have learned, its probably from natural selection in pre-historic times. Once upon a dark and grim time, or so I picture, all that mattered is pumping out rugrats before dying, and maybe providing for them so they can in turn pump some out (and its amusing how many in my high school class still seem to subscribe to this model). Natural selection, being the powerful force that it is, led to the proliferation of survival traits resulting in early breeding, probably at the detriment to longevity. In fact, it might have been an advantage for someone to kick the bucket (to the offspring), once the offspring are mature. Then they don't have to compete with their parental units for food, and the parental units are obsolete once they can't breed anyway.
In modern times the requirements of education, skills, and knowledge to flourish in society requires a long learning period. So long in fact, that it might exceed pre-history death times (well... I vaguely think they were around 30). This creates a conflict where when people are ready to start contributing significantly, their bodies are on the decline. This problem leads me to the disturbing thought that since the learning period is so constrained by lifespan, there will be a point where even an expert in a field has to take the foundations on faith. And it seems once we are disconnected from the knowledge path leading up to a technology, there is suddenly a huge cliff to fall off of, if something were to interrupt our current technology. Of course, this has been dealt with in many a SciFi book, and some even suggest that their may be rise and fall cycles of civilization.
The way I see it, several things can happen. We could artificially increase the learning rate, perhaps an external (to the biological brain) knowledge repository. We could drastically increase life span (undoing pre-history selection), allowing plenty of time to learn. Or we could crash hard and have to start over, which doesn't sound like much fun.
Anyway, there you go. I think my second draft is much more coherent.
"Ghost in the Shell - Stand Alone Complex - OP - Inner Universe"
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