Take a look around, nothing much has changed.

[davywavy]

The patest issue of Wired magazine is the 'Ideas Issue'; they look at probable developments in society and technology over the short and longer term. Mostly this is in the field of communications media and the exciting new avenues for sharing pictures of your cat with the world which will soon open up. I have to say I found reading all of this a bit intimidating. Just when I've come to terms with one set of technology a whole bunch more comes along and invalidates everything I've just learned. When I were a lad, I found myself thinking, we made do with two tin cans and a bit of string to talk to our friends. Kids today. Eeh. They don't know how lucky they are. Tchah!.

I then stopped myself with the awful realisation that I have finally started sounding like my dad.

It struck me, though, why teenagers always seem so okay with new technology when most of the rest of us constantly feel like we're running to keep up - it's because when you're 14 you're seeing all this for the first time, but as you age you have to forget and learn anew every couple of years or so and it's not that you cannot do it, it's that you just really can't be arsed. A new iPhone? Why care? There'll be the next gadget du jour along in a week, so why develop a skill which is soon to be obsolescent?
It's this mindset, expanded, which is what makes people get old.
The world changes, and it's really tempting to become dogmatic about it; to rail against changes rather than adapt to them. It's like a couple of years ago when I sulked and stamped my foot and said I'd not go and visit the US again because of their overly complex and prescriptive immigration rules; obviously, as an attitude on my part, this was foolish as it displayed unadaptive thought patterns. Rather than complaining about things which one cannot change, it is better to change behaviours. It's better to learn new skills, even ones of short-term use, as they make the brain forge new connections and that increase in plasticity helps delay neural degredation and the resultant dribbling and incontinence.

Anyway, this post is more of a reminder to myself than anyone else, but I'll cap it with a question: What do you complain about, when really you'd be better off just changing what you do?

Comments

[crocodilewings.livejournal.com]

Are you familiar with transhumanism?

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

I'm aware of the concept.

[crocodilewings.livejournal.com]

I think it's an extreme example of a mindset that knows what's possible but doesn't quite have it yet. This mindset, I suspect, is far more significant to keeping track of technological progress than age. Most of the people I work with are about fifteen years older than me, but because they're always impatiently waiting for the next development, they never get left behind.

I could have said that without bringing up transhumanism at all, thinking about it.

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

It's mostly to do with maintaining interest and curiosity and a willingness to try new things, especially ones outside your usual sphere.

Transhumanism per se, however, always struck me as unconvincing in its predictions for the same reason all those 1950's predictions that we'd have limitless free electricity from the miracle of nuclear power by the faraway year of 2000 turned out to be wrong.

[crocodilewings.livejournal.com]

I'm not exactly an adherent of transhumanism, but it isn't just crazy anime fans going on about the fabulous robot bodies we'll all end up walking round in. Underlying it is a general idea that the faster technology advances, the less time people have to adapt to it, and eventually it's the people who are going to have to change.

The amazing future of my childhood was about two years ago (sans jetpacks and flying cars), and in retrospect it seems pretty unambitious. I've got no desire to have my head cryonically frozen after I die on the offchance of that shiny robot body, but I am totally prepared to see the world change into something largely unrecognisable in the next few decades.

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

I'd say that the wqorld has always changed into something unrecognizable from the perspective of people as they age. Someone born in 1890 would have seen everything from Queen Victoria to the Atom Bomb, Someone born in Rome in 100BC would have seen an end to Republic and a rise of Empire, and people were crying The World turned Upside Down in 1643.

Things change. They always have. The mechanisms of change have themselves changed in our era, but beyond that, change is still consistent.

[crocodilewings.livejournal.com]

It's constant, but I wouldn't call it consistent. New technologies improve our ability to generate more technology. 'Exponential' is a perfectly legitimate term to use.

[(Anonymous)]

Oh I'm terribly sorry, I thought you two were talking about Transhumance.

I think one of the earliest Sumerian cuneiform texts refers to the degenerate youth of today; it's just that the old stratified diffusion has speeded up a bit, so that instead of Grandad having to work his socks off so your Dad can get into the Grammar and you can become a Doctor, you can now go for the Crack Dealer/ X Factor contestant career option. That said a lot of Free born Romans volunteered for Gladiator school.

Suspicion is that we haven't changed much in the 20,000 years that homo sapiens sapiens have been about. Maybe Darwinsim can take us no further than us, we just keep coming up with new toys to play with.

D