Sunday, March 1, 2015

Technology: The 500lb Gorilla

I thrive on technology, it is an essential part of my daily life.  It is my livelihood, and it is an integral part of how I think and integrate with society.  I recognize that it is one of the greatest things about living in the modern era.   What if Albert Einstein had been blessed to live in a time where iPhones were common place - how much more would he have accomplished?   Perhaps time travel would not be a fantasy, we would have we would have traveled into deep space, and solved the world-hunger issue.   Or maybe instead, he'd spend his days playing flappy bird, and mesmerized before his 71" UHD 4K LED television playing XboxOne and sustaining himself purely on Soylent.

Technology is a blessing of our modern society, but it comes with some serious downsides too.  Sure you can put your phone away (maybe), but in that device you have all the answers from every perspective, to every question that may shove it's way to the front of your brain's queue.

Do I think technology is going to be the downfall of our society?  No.  However, I think without some conscious tempering of our device habits we are going to start communicating purely with horrid grammar, and predominantly with the use of Memes.  Social networks have already made it so that most of the folks you thought were cool growing up, have shown their true colors, and you realize what a real piece of work they have become - or always were.

However, my point here is not to berate our generation(s), it is to point out how much potential we have.  There probably is an Einstein out there right now, and he does have an iPhone.   There is also a Nikolai Tesla, Louis Pasteur, Marie Curie, George Washington, Queen Elizabeth I, and more - and they are all out there somewhere, with their mobile phones and their touch screen laptops, but in order to become all they can be, they need motivation - and those same tools are stripping us all of ours.

Just a little food for thought while I'm waiting on a delayed flight, tethering my touchscreen laptop to my iPhone, and thinking, as always.

Sunday, January 18, 2015

Conviction is stranger than fiction

Conviction is defined by Merriam Webster as "a strong persuasion or belief."  We all have convictions, about a plethora of things.  To the bearer, a conviction is absolute and irrefutable fact. All opposing view points are thus inherently flawed.  In fact I would argue that conviction is really just a by-product of closing one's mind.

While our dictionaries are open, a couple of more pertinent terms:
Fact is "something that truly exists or happens : something that has actual existence".
Faith is "firm belief in something for which there is no proof".

The strange thing about conviction is its source. While conviction may sometimes apply to fact, it is rather unnecessary, since fact is fairly irrefutable. For example, if you read this blog at all, you likely already know that I am neither religious, nor am I atheist. I am firmly in the category of "I don't know", and I'm very OK with that.  However, I can willfully acknowledge that true belief in any god, is conviction, and is derived from faith.  However, a similarly strong conviction can equally be acquired from a lack of faith.

However, the true oddity, the reason I say it is stranger than fiction, is the extent to which we take it. We as humans seem largely unable to accept conviction as opinion, and treat it as fact. We are unable to see it as less than absolute. We zero in on trying to prove our convictions, and focus on ensuring that we are right, rather than accepting the possibility that we could be wrong.

When our convictions are challenged, it wounds us, and our natural response is to double down on those beliefs.   This is true in a variety of aspects of life.   For example, how many research studies are slanted by the convictions of the researcher?  How many political battles have been waged based on the convictions of a politician, or a political base?  How many people have died based on the convictions of world leaders or religious zealots?

Some of the greatest works of fiction could never compare to the stories from throughout history where people were driven to extreme actions based on their strongly held beliefs. Atrocities and inhuman accomplishments both share this spotlight.