When is too much technology detrimental to our welfare?

Bobw

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Interesting question being asked on another forum. Many younger members can't envision life and commerce without computers and the internet. Yet life and commerce worked quite well until this technology came along.
Now a hacker can basically destroy us by stealing our funds from our bank, maxing out our credit cards and then ruining our credit with just a few keystrokes.
Could it be we were better off without them and didn't know it?
 
YES. I really don't understand this need to be in constant contact with other people. Sitting on a river bank with my fishing pole
beats the heck of having to listen to someone yapping all the time.:)
 
I'm a rebel against technology. I don't have a "smart" phone. My cell makes phone calls and texts --- when I bother to use it.
I have a land line phone that I use to actually call people. :eek:

I have a desk top PC --- no tablet, no Wi-Fi here.
I actually write real paper checks to pay the bills that come in the mail. *gasp*
No online banking here.
 
I am a gadget guy. PC fanatic and always have the latest smart phones and doing stuff with each of them. With that being said, technology is making us lazy, incompetent, unsociable, and is definitely hurting us.
 
I am a gadget guy. PC fanatic and always have the latest smart phones and doing stuff with each of them. With that being said, technology is making us lazy, incompetent, unsociable, and is definitely hurting us.

There are drivers on the short track scene that I've said would be great at interviews if they could just tweet. Put a microphone in their face and they can't give an interview to save their life but they sure are sociable tweety birds on their iPhones.
 
Interesting question being asked on another forum. Many younger members can't envision life and commerce without computers and the internet. Yet life and commerce worked quite well until this technology came along.
Now a hacker can basically destroy us by stealing our funds from our bank, maxing out our credit cards and then ruining our credit with just a few keystrokes.
Could it be we were better off without them and didn't know it?

Could it be we were better off without them and didn't know it?[/quote] YES
 
Interesting question being asked on another forum. Many younger members can't envision life and commerce without computers and the internet. Yet life and commerce worked quite well until this technology came along.
Now a hacker can basically destroy us by stealing our funds from our bank, maxing out our credit cards and then ruining our credit with just a few keystrokes.
Could it be we were better off without them and didn't know it?

It has a lot of ambiguous or Good/Bad qualities.

example : An electric wheelchair offers freedom to many unfortunate truly needy people and allows them to enjoy a few things that they would otherwise miss.
On the other hand it condemns a lazy person that initially doesn't need the chair. I believe a neighbor would be walking today if she had never allowed herself to become dependant upon the wheel chair that was initially purchased for her mother.

There are also things technology can do with algorithms and simulations that would be almost impossible to match manually. We hear the horror stories, still there are also a lot of good things as well.

But I feel and respect the anti tech idea. Racing was more fun in the primitive sense. There was a time when car builders were only limited by their imagination. Indy, Talladega, Daytona etc could handle all the horsepower that could be offered.

But after 200 MPH become common, keeping the cars on the ground among other things forced more governing or controls. Media technology was a factor too, the beastly cars at Indy in the 50 and 60s would have been throttled much sooner if there had been more attention to the savage nature.

Now drivers are safer, but some of the glamour, mystic or intriguing edge has been lost.
 
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My teen daughter barely looks up from her cell phone. Have you ever been walking in a mall, and almost ran into by a teen on their phone? Phones have replaced real communication.
 
There's a big difference between a electric wheel chair and hacking into multi million dollar corporations IMHO.
Technology is good but it has crossed the line in some areas
 
There's a big difference between a electric wheel chair and hacking into multi million dollar corporations IMHO.
Technology is good but it has crossed the line in some areas

That's a valid point, the wheelchair thing was a miss on my part.

I hate some of the technology too, but we can't put the genie back in the bottle, at least in most cases.
The hacking demons and other issues will probably just drive more encryption technology or something related.

I hate calling the service centers and having to go through those bank of questions prior to talking to someone, and that person might be in India with a difficult dialect.
But in some ways the public fuels those things or self inflicts by rewarding the biggest cut throats with their buisness.

End of the day the world is twisted toward the latest and greatest in technology and it will only intensify with time.
 
My teen daughter barely looks up from her cell phone. Have you ever been walking in a mall, and almost ran into by a teen on their phone? Phones have replaced real communication.
Thats when the phone gets ripped out of my teenage sons hands.
 
Interesting question being asked on another forum. Many younger members can't envision life and commerce without computers and the internet. Yet life and commerce worked quite well until this technology came along.
Now a hacker can basically destroy us by stealing our funds from our bank, maxing out our credit cards and then ruining our credit with just a few keystrokes.
Could it be we were better off without them and didn't know it?

It depends upon the technology, and how it's applied.
Note that I make my living servicing technology... but I shun it as much as possible when I'm away from work - except in hobbies where it can provide an advantage. For example, I work on computers and network equipment all day but I don't have up-to-date gear at home. Just enough to get the job done. I gave up a cellphone years ago and still use a landline at home. I'm just not fond of an electronic leash. But for racing I study new technologies and utilize parts and tools as much as I can, lest I get left behind.

Your hacker example is a real problem, but also preventable for the most part. Life has never been perfectly safe. Used to be we feared bank paperwork foul-ups.

The kids don't know any better because they haven't lived with less. But we all get criticized by older generations who don't "get" the technology that we like. Funny thing about "the good ole days" is that memories seem to make then feel better than they did at the time.

An interesting comment I heard from some 20-somethings: they admitted that they have trouble interacting face-to-face because texting on cellphones and using PDAs and such have taken personal contact out of the equation... and they don't know what to do when they don't have a device between them. Makes it hard to form real relationships that in turn can lead to families. Maybe that's a good thing if you're trying to keep your high school aged kids out of trouble, but maybe not so good if you want grandchildren some day...
 
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Well, the Unabomber did try to warn us, grim as that thought is. So did Alvin Toffler sort of.

The only way to save humanity is if the stuff crashes and stays crashed forever.
 
"The only way to save humanity is if the stuff crashes and stays crashed forever."

So many people are addicted to technology that if technology crashed forever people couldn't handle it.
Certainly wouldn't be able to read and post stuff on this web site, for example.
 
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