Is the world moving too fast?

I think about this occasionally, you know, how I think about random stuff for no aparent reason :-D

I'm 32, so I'm of the age where all the wonderful things like home video and entertainment in general started happening in a big way.
But I look at it now and the sheer speed new technologies are introduced, we go from camera phone, to mp3 player phone, to internet phone, to touchscreen phone, to application phone, to Touch screen, mp3 playing, internet ready, video camera application phone.... in like 4 years.
I wont even go into how fast PC hardware moves, omg it's frightening.
Then we get TV's and Monitors, HD comes out followed by the HD/DVD's quickly being stomped on by Blu-Ray (reminiscent of Beta-max/VHS anyone?)

It just seems that in this tiny part of our lives everything moves at lightening speed and is gaining momentum at an alarming rate.
With all this technology to help us do more with less effort at 3 times the speed means our lives are speeding up too.

Man I live fairly laid back and I feel like it's all moving too quickly, what ever happend to stopping to smell the roses?

I tell you one thing, moving to Canada made me realise how fast the UK moves, even out on the coast where I was, it's a much slower pace here, basically the same as the UK but slower paced and more spread out.
I never used to think of things like this, but having a teenager shines a light on things.

Did you know, a teenage boy can happily stay in his room for a week?... only leaving to forage for food and relieve himself. I dunno, I was out doing something when I was that age.
I think it's largely the internet, I'm guilty of it more than I like, but I didn't get internet until 2003 lol.

I think I'm getting old, WILL YOU TURN THAT INFERNAL NOISE DOWN!!! :-D

Well that was kind of a light hearted rant with some food for thought I guess lol

 

I know how you feel. Just compare it to the technological revolution that started once America reached it's peak so far as a country, sort of around 1940/50 or so.

 

How did you answer that so quickly??.... OMG you have some new fangled internet phone that can show pages and content before it's actually been posted, just so you can get more done in a much speedier way :-D

 

Nope, I've just got the tab open in the background.

 

And as usual I come in to Nedlamars thread to offer the antithesis :-D But yeah its only opinion and mine has always been technology isn't moving fast enough,I'll go one step further I hate being born in this age of technology.Over the years I've come to realise what mankind is capable of and the life most of us lead now is so primitive,I want to be put in coma and wake up in 500-1000 years or even 5000 years I would do this tomorrow even if it meant I would never see any of my friends or family again.

The technology we play with now is kids stuff to pass the time,these are the kind of things I want to experience.

I want a computer that perform all tasks instantly and which I can have a conversation with,with an infinite resolution or maybe jacked straight into my brain.
I want a robot that can perform tasks like a human.
I want to take ONE pill that will make the hair grow back on my head, fix all my medical ailments and allow me to live forever.
Biological/genetic/technological augmentations that can increase intelligence.
I want a virtual reality headset that feels exactly like looking around in the real world or even a gaming machine that works like the matrix.
I want to visit all the nearby planets by spaceship and take photos,hell I want to fly to Alfa centauri and see if there are any planets I can land on and take a dump.
I want to meet aliens and listen to their perspective on things.
I want an unlimited power source that can power earth which will bring and end to war and human suffering.
A flying car.
I want to understand the physics of the universe and how its constructed and maybe even learn the reason we're here.

Just a few things I know I'll never see,I know they are all possible in a few hundred years or less and I have complete faith the human race will make them possible while I will already have died many years ago probably covered in my own excrement with a bunch of doctors leaning over me saying they don't know what's wrong or that its just my time.

Faster, faster,faster,more,more,more, now,now,now before I'm dead...

 

This made me think of my great grandmother, who passed away years ago at the age of 95. I don't know if you all have seen a movie called "ZULU" made in the 60's, and starring Michael Cain - tells the story of a handfull of British infantry that holds off a force of 4000 Zulu warriers in 1879 - this after the main British force of over a thousand had been massacred by them. Good flick. Anyway, my great grandmother was five years old when that ACTUALLY happened, and lived to see men land on the moon. Technological development has been increasing in speed ever since the first man whopped the second in the head with the jawbone of an *** . . .

Speaking of men on the moon:

Might wanna thumb through some technical manuals, 'cause we aren't there yet, my friend

 

True to form Rikky :-D

Interesting points you make, I guess I would love to see all those things too but in many ways I don't know if I really would.

I do, however have to comment on the points quoted.
While a pill to cure anything would be a nice thought, the thought of everybody being able to live forever would ultimately destroy the human race, look how fast the earths population is growing now, if people stopped dying or lived to 200 years old, think how incredibly overcrowded it would be, we would be forced to build flats and houses on every last square inch of natural earth... and it still wouldn't be enough... then what? Human culling?

And the intelligence pill, while that would be nice also, I think it would have an adverse effect, if everyone were super intelligent, arguments would break out more frequently because everybody knows too much, and with that opinion would still thrive meaning the arguments would get pretty nasty and there would likely be lots of pushing and shoving... and button pshing.
It would be the old thing of "If everybody was the same, the world would be a boring place"

But I would like a flying car... hell at this point I'd just like a car that doesn't go wrong every 2 months :-D

If you have seen the movie Wal-E , it has an interesting future concept of technology in that nobody walks anymore, everybody is sitting ALL the time.

We are humans, the ultimate survivors, the ultimate hunters... gradually getting weaker and weaker and more heavily reliant on technology.

Now lets take another example from a movie, Escape From LA (I think, may have been New York) where at the end he detonates a massive EMP wiping out everytihng elictrical on the planet, now saying once we reach this wonderous future you speak of where technology is abundent and something for some reason does cause a world wide EMP, then what?
Hell if that happend now there would be a complete world wide shut down that would likely develope into civil wars all over the world.
Ever been in a store when there's a power cut?... no one knows what to do.

We must never lose sight of our ability to survive off the land but with every new piece of time saving technology, we lose a little more of that knowledge and instinct.

But a flying car would be cool :-D

 

I did say "so far". Scale and speed of invention wise I think everyone has been in a dip recently. It's all thanks to WW2 making all these new technologies available to the American Public.

 

You DO know it's 2010 right? :-D

 

I am one of the original baby boomers (1947) and the leaps in technology in my lifetime have been astronomic.

when i was born there was no penicillin and now they can cure just about anything (except the common cold)

I grew up with a 12 inch TV (black and white) screen and only land line telephones, cars were all great big clunkers.

Now we have instant communication any where in the world fron a phone that is smaller than a pack of cigarettes.

the new technology is making everything smaller and more powerful except TVs, those are just getting bigger all the time.

At 63 i don't know how much time i have left but no doubt i will see more wonderful things.

 

I've had enough of the hustle and bustle of the modern world so I live in an idyllic place almost like a hermit with few wants and needs. Sprinkle in some lifelong friends and my world is complete.:cloud9 Only thing that bugs me is that the monthly bills seem to be increasing in frequency! No sooner have I paid one when it's brother comes right behind it!:eek

 

@Bill... Funny you should mention the phone land line thing, I remember when I was a kid my mum would phone her brother at Christmas, he moved to Australia in the early 70's.
Not only did the call cost a small fortune but she had to arrange and book it several days in advance, she would call the operator at the arranged time and the operator would call her brother, then connect the 2 of them.
This is one thing I am very thankful for in terms of technology, I've moved thousands of miles from my family and I couldn't imagine only speaking to them once or twice per year, I can pick up the phone any time I want and call for 2c per minute.

I also remember a time when we didn't have a phone lol, used to use the neighbours, also remember getting our first VHS player, was a black,silver and deep pink JVC front loader.
I also remember my mum and dad coming home with our first CD player, a Technics that matched the stack system they had. My mum came in with it pleased as punch, dad hooked it up and we all stood round it looking... until my sister said "put a disc in then" and then my mum realised... we didn't have any :-D So I toodled off down the road and picked up Dire Straights - Money For Nothing cd lol

One other memory lol, I remember my grandparents getting their first remote control TV, both of them would sit there watching it, decide to change the channel... my grand father would get up... walk across the room, pick the remote control up from the top of the tv, point and push abruptly at the tv and change channel, put the reomote back on top of the tv, walk back across the room and sit down. Always made me laugh that :-D

So thats my walk down memory lane that had little to do with the thread, but it's my thread so ner :-D

 

Just stay off my lawn. Seriously. :-D

http://www.moddb.com/members/mattmandude/images/seriously-get-off-my-lawn

I love technology, but it moves so fast, it can be hard to keep up. Remember when 16 Meg was a decent amount of RAM? Video cards were what you used to rent VCR tapes? We actually played card games with 52 actual wax coated cards? Hmm, reminds me, I need to download some card games onto my cell phone. :-D

 

If I'd have be born more than 100 years ago in an age without 20th century medicine I'd have been deaf and semi blind before my fifth birthday and dead by my eleventh.

The old times seem picture perfect in your mind,everyone just toils the fields and world is in harmony until you actually think what it would entail,no one ever pictures the year that the crops don't grow or your animals become diseased and your family starves or your child is taken ill and they drain out his blood to fix him.

Welcome to the forum balker:-D

 

Not quite true. Penicillin was first used in the early 40's and is credited with saving many lives during WWII.

Perhaps you were thinking of the polio vaccine! Bill, like me, I would guess you know people in your age group who had contracted this.

That was a HUGE step forward. And with just 146 cases YTD, it is nearly eradicated, just like smallpox was back in the 70's. (In 1985, there were still over 350,000 cases worldwide).

(I happen to be involved in this effort).

Yes, in some ways it does seem things move too fast. On the other hand, who'd have thought just 30 years ago, that people from all corners of the globe would be sitting here having this discussion.

 

Yup Rikky. Spot on! Lot's of food poisoning in those days.

Well, I know polio like most don't, first hand. I was born in March '53 and at 1.5 I got it, about 6 months before it became available.

As to penicillin, Fleming noticed it in '28 but until the mid-40's it couldn't be mass-produced, still a good number of folks got helped by it.

It wasn't until the 50's that this issue got solved.

I'd rather live with today's innovations but without the normal ways things go on in our society these days. I'll stop here.

 

to TimW
Remember, you didn't hear that from any of us.


(and you might want to run a spell check).:innocentroflmao


me:duck