The exponential rate of technological growth

Sometimes its easy to miss the degree to which our cultural and technological environment is changing when we are participating in it on a day to day basis. I recently ran across a video from NOAA that brings the degree of some of these changes home.

This is a video of all air traffic around the world in a 24 hour period. Really makes an impression.

A friend of mine had an interesting comment about it: "There is an odd thought I sometimes have that some of our problems are due to our evolutionary and cultural heritage in small groups and villages, and a simple inability to comprehend the scale and simultaneity of the modern world. we can intellectually manipulate information on large scale issues, but we don't really comprend things at a gut level. little videos like this seem to make the scale more real, at least for me."

All i can say is that it makes the scale of human endeavor a little more real for me as well.

Aging and Technology

In just over a decade, a quarter of Europe's population will be over 65 - and populations throughout the first world are also aging. This article takes a quick look at how technology is being developed to ease the burdens and risks associated with age. There is a wide range of technologies that could make living longer easier, from robotic assistants (quite actively pursued in Japan) to better interactive communication devices that track location and condition issues and can autonomously notify caregivers of error conditions like falls or low blood sugar.

This is an interesting second order problem - as world populations live longer, healthier lives as a result of developments in geriatric medicine and aging research, technologies will be needed to support active and healthy lifestyles for this older demographic.

Death and Technology

I ran across this article recently, which discusses how changes in medical technology have had a historical and continuing effect on our definition of death. First we died when we stopped breathing, then we died when our hearts stopped beating, then it was the cessation of brain activity that determined time of death, etc.

While i found the historical perspective interesting, the more compelling aspects of the continuing relationship between death and technology lie in projecting this relationship forward into the future. How far are we going to be able to push the boundaries between life and death as our technological tools continue to improve faster and faster?

Technology and the Legal System, a Recipe for Pain

Technology has had a significant historical effect on how we live our lives as well as the social and cultural matrix in which we operate. It should be no surprise that a legal system initially drafted in a time of horse drawn carriages, hand carried mail, manual printing presses, and clipper ships may not integrate well with some of the technologies we take for granted in our every day lives. In this spirit then, I applaud PC World for pointing out some of the more glaring issues.

The Worst Technology Laws