It seems we take for granted that technology is moving forward at a breakneck pace. Everyday there is a new discovery, a new gadget, a new medicine…all better, faster and, of course more expensive, than the ones before.

I admit I get caught up in it too. I mean shit…we’ve got robots on Mars, animal cloning, genetically modified foods, infinitely fast computers, new drugs hitting the market everyday, commercial space flight, nuclear power, and cell phones the size of a credit card.

Do you guys remember few years ago they grew a human ear on the back of a lab rat?? They put human genes in a rat and made it grow a flipping ear on its back!! Even I have to say that is really freaky.

Anyway, I could go on with gazzillions of examples of all the unbelievable things technology and science are doing, but I’ve already listed enough to make my point: What freaking good do any of them do us?

I’m not discounting the value of science or saying that one day some of it might not produce significant results….but right now, all the “unprecedented progress” of the past 30 years is just so much HYPE.

I like my computer. I like my cell phone better than a phone attached to a wall….but my life is not really improved because of these things….and that is the real point. Life is not significantly better because of these dizzying science fiction advances.

Here are some real inventions:

Refrigerators:

I mean with a refrigerator, we go from eating spoiled, rancid food which will eventually kill us, or gorging on whatever fresh food we occasionally find, to being able to regularly get fresh fruits, vegetables and meat. It transforms life from “Feast or Famine” to “eat whenever you feel like it”.

The first known artificial refrigeration was demonstrated by William Cullen at the University of Glasgow in 1748. However, he did not use his discovery for any practical purpose.

In 1805, an American inventor, Oliver Evans, designed the first refrigeration machine. In 1876 German engineer Carl von Linden patented the process of liquifying gas that is still part of basic refrigeration technology. Finally, in 1918 Kelvinator marketed the first practical home refrigerator.

— The moral is that it was over a hundred years before the discovery made it into the lives of popular folks, thus improving our lives…alot.

Indoor Plumbing/Public Sewage:

Man…this one was a master stroke. We go from shitting in the woods, polluting our own water supplies and dying of thirst…..to porcelain flushing toilets and a near unlimited supply of clean water. That, my friends, is real progresss.

Over 2,800 years ago, the fabled King Minos of Crete owned the world’s first flushing water closet, complete with a wooden seat. The Hanging Gardens of Babylon, one of the 7 wonders of the ancient world, was made possible by a sophisticated irrigation system. In essense, any ancient civilization worth a crap (no pun intended) was capable of public water systems.

It seems the idea of toilets didn’t materialize again (on record at least) until thousands of years later, in 1594. Sir John Harington built a “privie in perfection” for his godmother, Queen Elizabeth, to use in Richmond Palace, and one for himself at his humbler estate.

Then a few hundred years goes by again, during which time only royalty had access to private toilets and sewage systems. The idea of public water/sewage popped up again in England, and then in the US in the early 1800s.

Engineer Julius W. Adams provided the framework upon which modern sewerage is based. In 1857, Adams was commissioned to sewer the city of Brooklyn, which then covered 20 square miles. Chicago is credited with having the first comprehensive sewerage project in the country (designed by E. S. Chesbrough in 1885), based on the New York model.

Although the country’s first bathtub was commissioned in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1842, it wasn’t until the 1920s that bathrooms finally began to take off for regular folk. Even in 1950, 35% of dwellings lacked full indoor plumbing.

An outbreak of amoebic dysentery in Chicago during the 1933 World’s Fair was traced to faulty plumbing in just two hotels. The tragic results were 98 deaths and 1,409 official cases.

So let’s rally around toilets. They’re the shit….even though this time it took thousands of years from the time of conception to the time the average person got to take advantage.

Penicillin:

I love this one. The next greatest drug is introduced every single day. However, as I am quick to remind people, the death rate of humans is holding steady at 100%….despite the multi-billion dollar drug industry.

Alexander Fleming “invented” penicillin in 1928…or rather he noticed that a blue mold killed bacteria in a petri dish in 1928. However, it wasn’t until 1940 that it was isolated for medicinal purposes. It was first widely used in WWII.

I studied Microbiology in college. Want to know what human achievement has saved more lives than all drugs combined? Sanitation.

Clean water and unspoiled food are the best drugs we’ll ever invent.

Get your head around this:

Notice that life expectancy is relatively high (around 50 years) in the paleolithic era and then it drops. Why is that? Well, the “invention” of agriculture allowed us to move closer to each other since larger concentrations of food were, for the first time, possible in the same area.

That was bad. People died earlier. Why? Simple….people get sick and when there are a lot of other people around….they get sick too. People are hazardous to your health.

Also notice that, despite prozac, lipitor, wellbutrin, celebrex, kryptonite, megatron, bowflex, and any other number of modern, and very expensive, medicines……the average life span has not skyrocketed.

The fact that it has gone up at all is mostly lifestyle and nutrionally related…..it has little to do with pills or surgeries.

The Car:

The freaking car!! I might accept a bit of debate on this one; however, overall this has been an awesome advance. This is the beginning of transportation, the beginning of availability, and an integral part of what makes modern life possible.

Horses work well, but cars make us go…and more importantly the internal combustion engine makes transport of goods possible. What good is a refrigerator to store fresh foods if you have no method of transport to get them to you?

Karl Benz (of Mercedes-Benz fame) was the German mechanical engineer who designed and built the world’s first practical automobile to be powered by an internal-combustion engine in 1885.

Henry Ford incorporated the Ford Motor Company in 1903, proclaiming, “I will build a car for the great multitude.” In October 1908, he did so, offering the Model T for $950. In the Model T’s nineteen years of production, its price dipped as low as $280.

Cars are very modern by most reckonings, but really most of the significant inventions mankind ever made all happened in a very small time frame…from the late 1800s to early 1900s.

The Telephone:

Uhh…this one is a no-brainer. I wouldn’t say the telephone lineage that makes it possible for us to talk on our cell phones while stuck in traffic is a particular boon….but the telephone is the beginning of the communications revolution….forget the Internet.

What good is an engine to transport goods to your refrigerator (which itself is no good without public water) without a telephone to tell the fruit farmer in California or the meat broker on the midwest plains that you need it? Although at that time, it was likely the telegraph, not the telephone that was doing the communicating.

In the 1870s, Alexander Graham Bell patented, not invented, the telephone. It seems Mr. Bell was standing on the shoulders of giants because I can’t find much history to this invention.

Antonio Meucci was the real inventor. He was a doctor by trade and through medical research realized that one could transmit voice via wire, and between 1850 and 1862 he developed at least 30 different models of telephone, although he was too poor to protect his inventions with a patent. I can’t find any history before that.

I think I’m beginning to see a trend….all these inventions depend on each other in large part to be useful. By themselves they are just mildly interesting. In conjunction they allow us to move from death by malnutrition to death by obesity in 100 years.

Actually, it was only about 50 years around the turn on the 20th century. We haven’t done jack shit that has paid off in the last 50 years….although based on the timeline of the other inventions, the latest wave won’t really start to pay off for the average person for a few decades yet. Right now we’re just muddling about, stiring the same tea cup of old discoveries, looking for a way to grow a fucking ear on a rat’s back!!

My point is that these technologies are not producing significant improvements in the quality of life of the average person. They are incremental advancements at best. Their “whiz-bang” factor is off the charts, but their value is debatable.

What does the discovery of water on Mars have to do with me?? Absolutely nothing…and those dying of thirst in Africa have about as much use for the water on Mars as they do for space flight, global positioning satellites and any other number of modern wonders. They might be interested if the water could somehow find itself from Mars in the spaceship using GPS and then wind up in their desert hut….they still wouldn’t have a refrigerator though.

And don’t think I have the rose colored “good ol’ days” glasses on. I don’t think past inventions are inherently better than the present ones anymore than I think music, movies, people’s values, or any other number of things were nececssarily better in the past.

I’m just saying when you get right down to the old “what is this doing for me” litmus test……today’s science is just so much volleyball.

3 Responses to “The not-so wonders of technology”
  1. Josh says:

    2 quick questions.

    1) How the fuck does anybody know what the life span was in the paleolithic era? I don’t care how you respond I still don’t believe it.

    2) Why try to bring water to people living in a desert hut? If they are thirsty they should move out of the fucking desert!

    Sorry about my f-bombs, it’s just one of those days where it is fun to say fuck.

  2. Elliott says:

    Josh,

    Your question was: “How the fuck does anybody know what the life span was in the paleolithic era?” Larsen, C. S. (1995). My answer is: “Biological changes in human populations with agriculture.” Annual Review of Anthropology

    Now as for how Mr. Larsen knows, he claims you can determine age and diet by studying dead people’s remains and surroundings.

    I don’t know if I believe it either, but it sounds plausible.

    I own this T-shirt, which claims “Medieval peasants worked less than you do!”. I met the guy who runs the organization that makes the T-shirts one time when he came to speak at Furman. I asked him just about the same question you just asked me, “How do you know how much medieval peasants worked?”

    He gave me an answer almost the same as the one I just gave to you. Deja vu.

  3. Josh says:

    Hmmmm, I bet Larsen and Medieval guy gets lots of women with that knowledge.

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