The Coolest Thing Since the Invention of Monkey Wrench

It’s true that we evolve our technology as we understand more, but our understanding of life has been limited by the pretense that nature is complex machinery. We have failed to investigate living systems in their own right, without the assumption that they are mechanical, until very recently. For example, we used to think the brain functioned like an input-output plumbing system — a system of pipes and valves in which things got jammed up and had to be released and flushed: the Freudian model of the brain. Then we invented the telephone and suddenly the brain was a telephone system. The neurons were wires relaying the messages down the wires, and things like that. Then we invented the computer and the brain became a computer. Then it became a holographic camera and projector. Then we invented parallel processing. So the brain became a parallel processor.

In other words, as technology comes closer to emulating our observation of life, we continue to project the latest technology onto life itself, ever confusing our models with natural reality.

2 thoughts on “The Coolest Thing Since the Invention of Monkey Wrench

  1. There’s a viable reason for this. Man created technological machineries to make life easier. Innovation is where a certain technology is advanced to greater capacity of whatever reason it is meant for. With man doing all this, its no wonder technology mimics how the human brain works.

  2. A human being lives on the Earth and gradually adapts himself to it, trying to adjust without even thinking about changing himself. This means that technology, science, culture, social and family patterns are developing. It seems that nothing else is demanded from us.

    In other words, we are still living at a time when we think that we can solve all of our problems with our reasoning. This reasoning, however, is based on egoistic or short-sighted materialistic thinking. Thus, when people apply technology, it is applied through their immediate needs, through their will to receive. And the result is a point where the system is nearing a breakdown.

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