Comfort and Peril

In the past week, I've finished three books.

I'm very proud of that fact. It DOES NOT happen often.
Yesterday, I started and finished the book The Accidental Time Machine in about 6 hours.
Joe Haldeman is a fine author. Both he and Robert Sawyer, one of my perennial favorites, do a good job of infusing real science into their science fiction. I guess I'm assuming that it's accurate science. Sawyer's specialty is paleontology. It shows up in most if not all of his works. This book by Haldeman feautured a thorough exploration of Quantum Physics and String Theory. In the two books that I have read by Haldeman and the 6 or more that I've read by Sawyer both include time travel/alternate universes as central themes. I guess that is also true of almost half of science fiction.

The other two books that I finished this week are:

Humans by Robert Sawyer ( Sequal to "Hominids")
How to Talk to Anyone by Leil Lowndes

All three books have driven home a clear message to me: Technology has really screwed up our lives.

With each major leap in technology/invention our lives become easier and more "convenient" and therefore worse. It seems convenience in the short term almost always leads to peril in the long term. This is my opinion at least, far from fact.

Case 1: E-mail

This invention makes it possible to send a message instantaneously to millions of people at once! An instant letter! This would have appeared to be magic to those living just 100 years ago. We can even send images, pictures, large documents, movies--just about anything that can be digitized.

The upside: more communication.

The peril: The fragmentation of communication, relationships, and society.

When we communicate by phone, we lose about 60% of the message. Studies show that more than 60% of what we communicate is through body language, tone of voice, posture, gesture. When we communicate by e-mail we lose even more: tone of voice, inflection.

E-mail is now the primary way in which I communicate with my friends, many of my co-workers,a nd conduct business connections. This is NO way to behave.

Case 2: The internet

upside: The whole world of information at your finger tips.
Peril: In this case, I actually think the benefits outweigh the downside. But it does lead to laziness. With so much at our fingertips I think we are that much more disinclined to remember things: facts, figures, phone numbers--why remember these things when so many devices can easily store and recall that information in moments.

Case 3: Fossil Fuel powered automobiles.

upside: One has the freedom to travel anywhere, at any time at a relatively high speed ( compared to walking or biking).

Peril:

1. Storage: think about all the wasted space that parking lots take up. Add to that the damages to the earth imposed by highways.

2. Fossil Fuels are killing are planet solely ( or at least making it uninhabitable for us).

3. Backlash: We've become so dependent on oil that when it runs out our societies will be thrust into anarchy and chaos. I think we will begin to see this within the next 10 years.