2012/8/28 GE2311 Technology and Society 1

Technology and Society

GE2311

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Astonishing theories derived from insights into Nature and the Universe were utilized to create the most fabulous goods and services in human history

but indiscriminate appropriation of some advanced scientific theories certainly appears to have rocked Civilizations

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atomic/ballistic-missile technologies quite capable of orders of magnitude greater human slaughter than all previous wars in history combined, as well as

appeasement of other technologies much less dangerous but nevertheless occasionally extremely destabilizing in environments where they are deployed

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Independent financially resourceful baby-boomers are appropriating all kinds of extraordinary electronic technologies enabling

work-at-any-distance to leverage a very substantial exodus from contaminated & violent industrial environments

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Note that telephones, computers, orbiting satellites,

photocopy machines, video, fax, the internet, mobile, pagers, etc,

enable many of the safety/health-conscious wealthier class to rapidly disengage from over contaminated industrial bases of operations which are the great cities of the West while maintaining an economic line to them.

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recognizing that extremely invasive and often very toxic industrial processes may have been necessary to subsidize the eventual evolution of a fantastic technology

once a certain threshold of development was reached, such technologies could be utilized to back away from the very over-contaminated industrial environments.

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Note also that such a move is exactly in sync with extraordinary advances in medicine in eliminating contagious diseases

the rise of the health & fitness movement, and,

sooner or later, dramatically adjusting the aging process.

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The locomotive, automobile, telegraph and telephone each enabled urban functions to occur at ever-increasing distances from downtown.

Digital technology now permits once exclusively urban functions to break free entirely of the city's gravitational pull

Access to technology will drive an even more divisive wedge between classes.

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the spectacular advances in medicine for

eradicating terminal diseases, satellite/broadband communications, vastly increased interest in health &

fitness.

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Along with absolutely staggering possibilities for genetic engineering, cloning, stem cell developments, bio-technology, plus perhaps

greatly extending the human lifespan would appear to be the fledgling beginnings of what may ultimately become a totally different civilization.

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Western Civilization is not a civilization: to put a finer point on it, it is an industrial

base of operations for the development of advanced technology.

The primary long-range function of the West was to unabashedly plunder the Earth and pillage ancient cultures for vital resources in order to eventually subsidize the evolution of a fantastic technology.

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After the first successful detonation of an atomic bomb, Trinity, on July 16, 1945, in that same year, the Atomic Age Opens.

Can we prevent atomic energy from destroying civilization?

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Faced with a future that might at any moment disintegrate in a series of atomic explosions,

how long would men cling to the long-range values and goals around which, we have built our civilization?

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Living with so drastically uncertain a future must profoundly change man's psychological and social outlook–

cause man to live for the present rather than the future, for himself rather than the community