Let me preface this with the statement that I am an avid technology supporter. So when I first looked at the question posed on the board, I thought "Well, of course technology betters mankind." And thought that was that. I mean, is Call of Duty better than Pong? Yep, +1 for 'Technology is Good'. Is the current computer I'm writing this on better than my old Windows 98? Well, considering I'd still be waiting for that dinosaur to turn on, I'm gonna have to give another plus to Good. The questioned seemed like it had a clear-cut, open and close answer. But then Brave New World and this Singularity concept came along and decided to add a few more variable to the once thought simple question. Exponential Growth, sure, I'd heard of it. "Good," I thought, "My computer with be faster, faster." That'll just help skip all the wasted time between Pong and the new Battlefield 3 coming out. But like usual I didn't take everything into account.
I'm fairly experienced in the mathematical area, so I thought I'd have a pretty good understanding of exponential growth despite what Kurzweil says about people not being able to mentally grasp the power of it. Well I underestimated. If by the time X=4 my exponential graphs are usually off my graph what does that say about when its at 40? Although all exponential graphs are different, it's hard to come by a standard exponential growth graph that doesn't look like a straight line in a very short amount of time. Well, that straight line only gets straighter and taller. At what point does that Y value not even matter because every time you move one step horizontally in time it changes so drastically that its hardly even recognizable. That's scary to think about with simply numbers, but applied to real life its impossible to fathom. There's literally a little, valiant knight of our morals that fights to protect the blissful ignorance of our delicate minds from the enlightening assualts of "the crackpot" Kurzweil.
So when technology approaches infinity, is it still good. The loss of humanity as we know it seems like a real big plus for team 'Technology is Bad'. Suddenly the pluses for Call of Duty and Boot Up times seem rather irrelevant. But then again, that's inferring that the Singularity will destroy humanity(Tangent --> But what is humanity? What makes people human?.... Well, to skip the hour and a half hour debate after Transcendent Man I'll just jump to what I very uncertainly concluded. For me the question of "What is means to be human?", and basically all the other questions that have been asked in class, can be answered if.... we knew the meaning to life. Then, we'd have a purpose, a direction, a given grand narrative. Suddenly, these very complex, overly philosophical, and basically unanswerable questions would be simple. Yet, we don't know the meaning to life (or at least there are many different views of it) so we really can't answer any of these purposefully thought provoking questions with a definite answer. For me, what makes someone human is the ability to decide what it means to be human.) That's no guarantee that it will prove the Terminator story line. It could turn out to be completely positive (though things rarely are) and cure hunger by making food unnecessary.
So after all this is technology good? Well in the short run, for me at least, definitely. In the long run? I can't say. But by the looks of it, we're strapped in and the roller coaster's not stopping. So through your hands up, have some Soma, and enjoy the ride. (Or be like Wyatt and enact a totalitarianism government to suppress society beyond the point of thought)
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