Is society to reliant on technology?

[sonofsanta]

I'm on the fence somewhat... don't get me wrong, I love where technology is going, I love what we've achieved so far and I'd hate to be without it. But the question was are we too reliant on it, and to some degree I think we are. I say this because many places simply have no contingency plan for when technology doesn't work - they simply come to a halt. I've been in shops for instance where the tills have stopped working. Rather than keep taking cash and accounting for it manually, they've shut the shop!

TL;DR - we probably do rely on it too much, because we don't have good contingencies in place.

[of course I am talking about the royal 'we']

+1 to that; technology is of course a wonderful thing, but could our society run for any reasonable length of time without it? If there was a decent power outage for even a week, the trains couldn't run, pumps couldn't dispense petrol, supermarkets wouldn't be able to sell items... not to mention people would panic because they'd be so unused to not having instant information on what was going on from Twitter, News 24 etc.

Not that I'd change it for the world. Technology is absolutely our advantage. In Year 7 RE I remember the teacher trying to convince us that tigers were superior because in a one-on-one match, its natural advantages would allow it to tear us apart. Even then I thought that was absurdly artificial, because where the tiger has its teeth and claws, we have technology; not just guns or cattle prods, but bows, spears, axes, the ability & foresight to pick up a rock and lamp it round the skull with it. It's our evolutionary advantage, and it's winning. It's why I firmly believe that we're but a mere stepping stone on the path to what will be the true humans: the species that really goes out into the universe, who will be humans completely intertwined with (and indistinguishable from) our technology, utterly connected to each other and riddled with our own inventions improving us and empowering us.

Er, so, yeah. Too much, but only cos it's all on foundations of sand than because it's a bad thing in itself. You can't ever go backwards, after all, as Pandora's Box tells us.

[X-13]

who will be humans completely intertwined with (and indistinguishable from) our technology, utterly connected to each other and riddled with our own inventions improving us and empowering us.

So... we're going to become the Borg?

[Gatt]

So... we're going to become the Borg?

Resistance Is Futile..

[localzuk]

Resistance Is Futile..

Indeed it is... @Little-Miss A9crTvyCEAEpE2T.jpg

[sonofsanta]

So... we're going to become the Borg?

Yup. Or, Mass Effect 3 spoilers: Like the good (green) symbiosis ending, albeit with less handwaving and "look! relays are magical"

[X-13]

Resistance Is Futile..

Resistance is useless.

[Theblacksheep]

It's why I firmly believe that we're but a mere stepping stone on the path to what will be the true humans: the species that really goes out into the universe, who will be humans completely intertwined with (and indistinguishable from) our technology, utterly connected to each other and riddled with our own inventions improving us and empowering us.

Sounds hideous.

[localzuk]

Sounds hideous.

Sounds great to me. Roll on the singularity I say!!