Friday, April 29, 2011

Cell Phone and Medical Records

According to Science Daily, physicians can see patients 3D medical records on thier cell phone. As a nurse myself, reading this makes me think of how fast technology is changing the lanscape of our lives. All the phenomenon in Sci-Fi movies I saw, or I thought I saw are flashing in front of our eyes........ If I may zoom in and fast forward to 2050, I see a civilization where those who own technologies, whether the new skype, or the new facebook, or the new meta-iPad would increase in wealth, while the majority or humanity struggle ever harder to live comfortably.

The paradox: technology makes lives easy, but it gives control mostly to the top 3% in the economic pie.

Friday, February 4, 2011

Ancient Aliens

We were on the plane, some 3000 feet above Tennessee, on our way home from our vacation in the Caribbean sun, and this fellow passenger strike a conversation out of no where with me. I found out later he was an engineer. We talked about how technology was getting smaller and smaller; our cell phone for example. My response to the "fact" that things are getting smaller with, "that's good right" statement. He responded by saying, yes and no. Yes because, it saves space, and we have better tools for doing the same tasks; taking pictures, communicating, "yellow pages" amongst others, all in a tiny gadget called the cell phone. Fifty years ago, you need separate bulky tools just to do all the tasks..... ; but there are "negatives". The fact that things are so tiny, if something break downs, fixing the gadget won't be so easy; imagine the consequences, the engineer continued.

(Fast forward): Let say, in 2012, a giant rock 3 mile wide that eluded NASA detection, hits Earth and we are all wiped out from history, and nature starts from scratch. Imagine the future people found our cell phones and supercomputers under layers of sedimentation, would they believe that people actually made them, or would they postulate an alien intervention hypothesis; just like the way we doubt that people/human can build pyramids, and amazing structures in the Americas way back in time.....

Just think how little we know about our human past and how this "ignorance" colored our perception and reality..... Imagine, if we are not as advanced as our extinct forefathers..... all our Ohs and Ahhs with the latest iPads, "latest this and that" may be a testament of our ignorance.

Just think....