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发表于 2011-10-19 10:55:32
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VOX POPULI: Can humanity keep up with its own inventiveness?
When the master inventor Thomas Edison died on Oct. 18 exactly 80 years ago, words of admiration for his achievements resounded across the United States. However, some journalists showed profound insight. For example, a newspaper carried a column that observed that, compared with the speed with which inventions advance, the wisdom that modern people need to understand the rapid change around them shows much slower progress. I found that quotation in a recent essay in an extra issue of the weekly magazine AERA by the astrophysicist Satoru Ikeuchi.
The statement predicts an age in which humans cannot keep up with the progress of science and technology. We may create new products but, rather than utilizing them effectively, find ourselves controlled by them. When I look back on the past 80 years and the advancement of technology that gave birth to everything from nuclear power to cellphones, I have to tip my hat to the writer's keen insight.
Recently, cellphone software to monitor other people's movements and phone calls stirred controversy. While cellphones are convenient, they bring the risk of meddling and constraint. Thanks to the advanced wireless technology that connects us, we live in a "round-the-clock response society." This fact alone is mind-boggling when we think about the days when we only had the fixed-line telephone.
According to a survey by the Institute of Statistical Mathematics, 56 percent of respondents in 2008 agreed that people become "less human" with the advancement of science and technology. The ratio of those giving that answer was the highest ever and double that of about 50 years before. After the accident at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, I am sure the percentage will have grown.
In the past, we used to say: "Necessity is the mother of invention." But Ikeuchi says in his essay that invention has become the mother of necessity. What about Japan's nuclear power plants? Are they there because we need them, or have they become necessary because they exist? Which of those statements is true? I want to ponder this question on the anniversary of the death of the master inventor.
--The Asahi Shimbun, Oct. 18 |
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