This week, instead of giving you the usual technology updates and analysis, I will be doing something basic, or maybe throw some futuristic thoughts. I will try to give my thoughts on the role of technology not only in our life and work, but as technology progress to touch every inch of our existence, how much we think and to what extent should we allow them into our lives?
The reason I am reflecting is that I read a book entitled The Giver which is written by Lois Lowry. This book actually is for a book for children, and in fact have won a good number of awards, including the John Newbery Medal for most distinguished contribution to American Literature for Children. It was originally read by my son who told me it was good, and I took it. Incidentally, it is always good to take an active interest in what your kids are reading, and ocassionally won’t harm much if you actually read it as well. That i believe, always create good talking points with your kids.
The story is quite thought provoking, and basically centers on a community in which the people, years into the future, use technology try to create a world where everything is perfect. It might seem bizarre, but overall, it does seem plausible that if we are too overzealous and if we could do it, we will be headed in that direction.
When you consider that a lot of grief or sorrow is because of poverty, then solve poverty. A lot of bad things come because of war, then use technology to acquire peace. If hunger is the issue, then insure that there won’t be any hunger. But the policymakers in this book went beyond that — they noted that a lot of grief comes from pain, so they were able to work out the perfect medicines that will cure pain and disease. Much grief comes from love, envy, anger, and greed, so basically they develop the pills to control that as well.
If you consider that people also becomes sorrowful because they make the wrong choice so they eliminated choice as well. So in this community, a committee of experts make the evaluation what jobs you get ( depending on detailed recordings and observations on your interests and talents), who you marry, and also they have systems to insure that only healthy kids are born, and these are assigned to the right ‘nurturers’ to insure comformance of the system.
In short, this was supposedly a story about a society where there is supposedly no fear, or no pain. Something like nirvana, or heaven, where everything works and is programmed to be just right. There is nothing unexpected, unusual or even inconvenient. Everything works according to plan, just like clockwork.
In short, the author perceives that we can actually not only use technology to improve our lives, but if we are not controlled, we will be moving forward to using it to shield us from everything that would cause sadness or grief, and if we allow technology to do that, sooner or later, we will come up with technology to do precisely that.
The hero, a 12 year old boy was selected to receive special training which allows him to experience true pain and pleasure. He later tries to opt out of the system, because he believes being ‘human’ is something that is different. Which begs the question that if you don’t know sorrow, would you know happiness? If you don’t know or have experienced failure, would you appreciate what it is to be successful. If you never experience hunger, would you know how lucky you are to always have food in the t able?
Now , more and more, as our society advance, we do start to being able to get practically everything we want, but we think we are doing our children a favor by doing everything to shield them from the bad things that we as parents also have experienced before. We shield them from pain, from hunger, from anything inconvenient or anything closely resembling hard work?
Are we therefore using technology the right way? Is that how we envision technology to increasingly play in our lives – shield us from the real challenges of the world?
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