Tuesday, March 07, 2006

The rise of the machines:

We human beings believe in development and we always want change in our daily activity, work, and life these are the main inspiration of development. The things or technologies and activities which our old generation hadn’t experienced on their life time, have been changed in our age and continuously going to be changed in future age. This is the symbol of progress and development. We human beings are curious of different thing so that we are advanced than animal. Sometime, a question arise in my mind that do we really see the consequences of new technology for which we are continuously struggling? I can give a very simple example or evidences of our past few year’s experiences and today’s development and future development experiences. Now a days even in work place, school, universities and so on, we use calculator to do simple mathematics, in work place different software help to do things like (ATM automated machinery, help to take decision and so on) which are making the human being as slave of technology. We must make the machine as a slave not being slaved of machine which I always believe.
I always remember when I was doing secondary level in Nepal and used to go village on summer vacation. The villagers used to ask me different questions like: have you travelled in train, have you travelled in airplane, have you seen that thing and so on. They used to imagine and I used to feel proud that I have seen and travelled. I was lucky in that sense because I used to live city and had got opportunity to experience and see all those things. In this statement, I want to argue that they are not backward. The only thing is they haven’t got opportunity to use or see.
Moore’s law is the proof that technology changes all round us at steady and constant rate. By the time we stop and think about just how quickly we adapt to and become dependent on new developments that new technology is quickly superseded. It won’t be long until the amount of processors on a single computer chip matches and then beats those organic switches that make up the human brain.
Today, technology is everywhere, in our homes, cars, shops, bank, universities, workplaces and it’s growing ever powerful. One day technology is going to be everything, and by then it might just be powerful enough to start making its own mind up. Let me give you one small example that when we do mathematics calculation then most of us use calculator, hand writing skills are disappearing because of computer. Our life has changed and we are doing quicker, faster and very efficiently even high complex things. Paradox is that new technology is created to make human existence easier. Even, Most of the developed countries’ economy is based on knowledge based economy which refers high skilled man power. I have tried to explain this statement by following diagram:
H= Human M= Machine
I think humanity has managed to put itself in the situation on a number of occasions throughout the centuries. Of course, the transition period is the difficult period but society adapts. If we go back 100-200 years there were vastly more people doing labouring jobs where now the workforce has advanced and adapted and become more skilled in different areas. Let’s imagine that what’s perhaps different this time is that we are creating intelligent machines, and machines are now becoming more intelligent than certain sectors of the population, which is going to cause problems. This is the new factor.
Because of technology different types of question arise that new technology is created to make human existences easier but new technology replaces the need to employ humans. The most constant equation of life is that we exchange labour for money. So if we rendered this surplus to requirements by new advance technology (Robots, ATM and so on) then what do we have left to offer in exchange for money? I do believe that there is light at the end of the tunnel, and it’s not necessarily from a robot-driven train.
I think new technology will affect or it eventually serve to make our lives harder on some society or certain age of groups of people in short term but I don’t think it will make our life style complex or harder. I don’t think the scientist want to look at the big picture while creating new powerful robot. Only the future can tell but there is no turning back, it should keep moving forward. It tends to happen when a workforce is replaced by machines, they will try to find another substitute work or job or some case different job as well. After industrial revolution, money is almost a constant, it’s the sense of value and it will find a different way of investing itself in people doing things. Its people doing things that make the economy run and I don’t doubt that we will adapt to find new ways of running the economy. It’s just that we get these interim periods where we almost scrap a generation of workers; morally and ethically that’s difficult to come to terms with.

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