We (that is, everybody in the western world…) live at a strange confluence of technologies. Many older technologies have been termed obsolete, and have been cast off, there are new technologies which we are adopting and haven’t come to be ‘mature’ yet…
As far as the older technology goes…how many people do you know, who understand (or have mastered)…Morse Code, know how to use draft animals, can name more than 5 constellations, know Latin, or even understand how an FM radio receiver works…? Likely your list of acquaintances is near zero… The same goes for me.
Of course, there are some pretty understandable reasons for this…almost nobody uses most of these skills anymore… On the other hand, we live in a world where we are ‘wired’ into a lot of new technology. How many people do you know understand: how to do arithmetic with binary numbers, can write programs (or even scripts…in code), know what a DNS look up table is, and know what frequency range your cell phone uses?
In both of these cases, there are literally hundreds of other skills and pieces of knowledge which most people are not even aware of, but either were fundamental aspects of life in the last 100 years, or are fundamental aspects of life…now.
It would seem that most of us are caught with our ‘technology’ pants down…
To be honest, this doesn’t sound like that big of a problem, until you start to see that while in the late 19th and early 20th centuries most people were quite conversant with the technologies in use at the time (most high school boys in 1925 could build a radio receiver…). Of course, in earlier ages, most people grew all of their food, and often made their own clothing too…
It almost looks like a trend where, as the technology rises, the fewer people are conversant with it. IF this is the case, it would seem that the ‘sweet spot’ in the graph of this behavior is nearby, but in our recent past.
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The domestic cat, when allowed to roam freely, will often become feral (i.e. Back to the wild), or in more urban settings become an ‘alley cat’. These animals have to take care of themselves and are often quite good at this. On the other hand, from some of my reading, it seems that the domestic cat, when raised in a typical household, becomes psychologically stunted into a prolonged post-infancy. A practical reason would be that there is no reason for a cat to have to develop beyond that, when every need is assuaged…
So, there is the dichotomy of the ‘alley cat’ and the ‘house cat’… The alley cat could be seen as very similar to most of our ancestors (i.e. living a subsistence life, relying upon only itself…). The house cat may be in our future (maybe even in our present), where the vast majority of our needs are fulfilled, and we our lives playing video games, watching TV, or even ‘interacting’ with ‘friends’ on Facebook…
A really interesting point to consider is that instead of using the term and concept of ‘technology’ in this discussion, change this to almost any fundamental aspect of our lives, and see if there is similar dissonance (e.g. using terms like: Politics, Business, Religion, Education…).
