How We Owe Everything To A Spark Of Pure Genius

Summary

The article reflects on the evolution of technology, contrasting past simple tools with modern complex devices, and questions whether these advancements truly represent progress.

Abstract

The author reminisces about the simplicity of past technologies, such as a whistling kettle, and compares them to current sophisticated tools like calculators and word processors. Despite the advancements, the author suggests that basic skills like mental arithmetic and handwriting were more efficient and valuable in the past. The article also touches on the social impact of technology, noting a decline in face-to-face interactions and musical skills since the advent of mobile phones and digital music production. The author concludes by acknowledging the importance of electricity and the genius of its pioneers, while also critiquing the trend of technology that seems to cater to the diminishment of basic human abilities.

Opinions

The author values the efficiency of past methods of calculation and writing over modern electronic aids.
There is a nostalgic view of the time when personal interactions and keeping appointments were more common before the era of mobile phones.
The author believes that modern technology, particularly in music, has led to a decline in the ability to play instruments and sing without digital assistance.
The article suggests that modern technology is contributing to a "dumbing down" of society by replacing basic skills with automated solutions.
Despite the critique, the author expresses gratitude towards the inventors of electricity, recognizing its fundamental role in modern life and technology.

A technological hit of the last century

Photograph by Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash

I go all the way back to a time when for us poor folk modern technology consisted of a kettle with a whistle to call your attention to the fact that the water had reached boiling point for making a pot of tea. In many ways, we have come an awful long way, and yet I'm not so sure about calling it progress.

Now we have hand held calculators and electronic cash machines at the checkout. And yet I can do simple calculations a darn sight quicker than either. We learned addition and multiplication at primary school by rote and subtraction by playing darts down at the local pub.

Now we have word processing programmes complete with spell checkers and all manner of other wordy wizardry. Back then we learned to read and write with a pen and ink. Funny to think on that there was a time when a ball point pen was the pinnacle of modern technology. Time was when you could easily write a message or a poem in the sand with a dirty stick. Try doing that with a computer.

Then along came the mobile phone. Somebody once asked me in a disparaging tone what we did without mobile phones. Well, for a start we actually chatted to each other face-to-face. We also kept appointments. These days you're lucky of your date turns up, and if and when they do, you are even luckier still if they bother to directly engage with you eye-to-eye.

We also learned to sing in tune and actually play musical instruments with a level of ambidextrous ability far beyond the ken of today's generation of wannabe pop stars who couldn't hold a tune to save their head full of magic lives if they tried.

And the more I think about it, I have come to realise that a lot of today's technology is simply to help life's thickos to get on in life. It's all about the dumbing down of even the most basic abilities, like adding 2 pus 2 or stringing a basic sentence together, to the pressing of a few buttons and the click of a mouse.

This got me thinking, yet another much neglected basic ability, how without what is probably our greatest modern day invention, on tap electricity, we'd all be screwed. Benjamin Franklin, Michael Faraday and Thomas Edison, not to mention Nikola Tesla, have a lot to be thanked for.

Of course, there are those of us who are very far from what you would call thickos, who reap all the benefits of this technological dumbing down, who are eternally grateful for that original spark of what was nothing less than pure genius.