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.