( If you own a Smartphone this is a disturbing  seven minute read)

I am sure because the major predecessor system to technology is organic life many questions as to the effects of technology have been asked.down the centuries.

I am also sure that in the end, history will record that human evolution is directly correlated to technology evolution. Evolution has a bias and that is to survive.
Can we see the direction of technology in the direction of life and evolution?

Many argue that technology has mostly caused a positive effects to our lives but I beg to differ.

Because to days technology has forces us to redistribute our time. Because we have become so heavily involved in what’s going on somewhere else and not so involved in our immediate environment we can barely fight back.  We just do whatever technology wants us to.

Today’s society is becoming more and more addicted to technology that people are not appreciating what the world has to offer.

The more advanced technology becomes, the more it seems to have control over our lives.

So, looking at the evolution of life and the long-term histories of past technologies, what is the long-term trajectories of the technium?

What does technology want? 

In general the long-term bias of technology is to increase the diversity of artifacts, methods, techniques. More ways, more choices.

Over time technological advances invent more energy-efficient methods, and gravitate to technologies which compress the most information and knowledge into a given space or weight. Also over time, more of more of matter on the planet will be touched by technological processes.

Knowledge is at the tip of our fingers.

Technology impacts a million basic things that we take for granted every day.

But is this really good for us?

Many including me will argue that technology is making us dumber. ( See previous posts)

We can no longer remember much because we store everything we need to remember on our phone or look it up when needed. Nowadays, people are becoming too reliant on their phones and other technology that they don’t realize what they are missing.

Our absurd addictions to technology, social media and our smartphones is starting to affect our brains.  Technology has brought us to the point where we can become so socially awkward that we would consider a relationship with a robot in the not so distant future.

It is increasing so much that you don’t even realize what you are trusting on!

We can’t control it anymore. Every minute of our lives we are distracted by an electronic device. The more automated we become, the more technology takes over our lives both now and in the future.

It is obvious that over time technologies will require more surrounding technologies in order to be discovered and to operate; some technologies becoming eusocial – a distributed existence – in which they are inert when solitary.

Also, technologies tend toward ubiquity and cheapness with new levels of complexity (though many will get simpler, too).

In the long run, technology increases the speed at which it evolves and encourages its own means of invention to change.

It aims to keep the game of change going.

What this means is that when the future trajectory of a particular field of technology is in doubt, “all things being equal” you can guess several things about where it is headed:

•The varieties of whatever will increase. Those varieties that give humans more free choices will prevail.

•Technologies will start out general in their first version, and specialize over time. Going niche will always be going with the flow. There is almost no end to how specialized (and tiny) some niches can get.

•You can safely anticipate higher energy efficiency, more compact meaning and   everything getting smarter.

•All are headed to ubiquity and free. What flips when everyone has one? What     happens when it is free?

•Any highly evolved form becomes beautiful, which can be its own attraction.

•Over time the fastest moving technology will become more social, more co-           dependent, more ecological, more deeply entwined with other technologies. Many   technologies require scaffolding tech to be born first.

•The trend is toward enabling technologies which become tools for inventing new technologies easiest, faster, cheaper.

•High tech needs clean water, clean air, reliable energy just as much as humans   want the same.

These are just some of the things technology wants.

Technology isn’t done transforming the world’s landscape. As a whole it is not just a jumble of wires and metal but a living, evolving organism that has its own unconscious needs and tendencies. By aligning ourselves with the long-term imperatives of this near-living system, we can capture its full gifts.

We don’t always have to do what technology wants, but I think we need to begin with what it wants so that we can work with these forces instead of against them.

Are we prepared?  I think not.

We are still in a very early evolutionary state of this technology we call ‘society’.

Humans can be seen as dumb cogs:

It is only on the scale of statistics with millions of particles that a particle’s choice shapes up as a predictable radiation half-life. But even individual human wants and desires average out to weirdly predictable laws in aggregate.

The question is, if the earth (nature, human society topped with technology) is a body of a ‘technium’, who will she communicate, who will she mate?

AI already exists and its name is “Progress”.

It exists now in an embryonic state. It is dependent on nourishment through its virtual umbilical cord from its nurturing mother which is human civilization. The Singularity will be the moment of its birth, but it is already alive.

It is on the threshold of taking on a life of its own. It is beyond our control and it is hurtling the human race towards a singularity that will cause the overthrow of humanity by an AI.

Of course we humans want certain things from the technium, but at the same time there is an inherent bias in the technium outside of our wants. Beyond our desires, there is a tendency within the technium that – all other things being equal — favors a certain solutions. Technology will head in certain directions because physics, mathematics, and realities of innovation constrain possibilities.

What are the most awesome technology creations that have changed the world that we live in?  It’s impossible to list them all.

Let’s start to see where we are going with some of the below Technological inventions.

Fibre optic technology. Graphene. Cellphone technology. Personal Computing. Microchip technology. Smartphone and tablet technology. Nano Robots. Satellite Communications. Solar Cells. The Internet of Things. Transistors. 3D Printing technology. Space flight. Nuclear power. Artificial intelligence. Organ transplants. Digital media. Genetic engineering. 

It is obvious that most are only at their beginning such as Drones and Robots, 3D Printing and Artificial Intelligence and Machinery that can fix itself.

You could write a litany on any one, but for the sake of this post I am going to look at one in particular.  The Smart Phone.

It is already changing the landscape.

Let’s look at the direction of smart phone technology, the ways smart phone technology changes society, understand the impact of change and manner in which we live our lives, and how smartphones could potentially create hazardous situations.

To understand the direction of Smartphone technology we must first except that smartphones phones come with many benefits i.e. they can be used as a library, they can multitask etc. but they can also influence your social life negatively.

Given that the society is heading towards a smart phone world, it is apparent that individuals will be investing more time to their screens tweeting and engaging in Facebook forums than meeting one on one with friends and colleagues.

That is so because increased number of smartphones will share similar mobile applications hence the ability to interact freely with social mates. This also poses a danger to relationships between individuals. Despite individuals being able to make an array of friends and engage in different relationships at a particular time the intensity of those relationships cannot be quantified as some persons in the social media are imposters.

From the above scenarios, it is apparent that despite relating with different people in different social platforms, no real oral communication is enhanced.

Smart phones have been a source of satisfaction to all social platform i.e. Twitter,Facebook, communication requirements. However, the negative effects of these social networks come with serious repercussions to the user.

There are three major areas that are vastly affected by smart phones, and they are business and socialization and wars.

Having said that, because technology explosion cannot be controlled, individuals need to acquire these new gadgets but not let their lives be controlled fully by these objects.

This implies that technology is rapidly changing to match the needs of humanity.

We live in a world today that relies on data communications. Smartphones can assist users in many different ways when it comes to data needs. Since the Smartphone has come into existence, it has constantly evolved into an improving piece of technology. This is something that will always occur in regards to smartphones, because companies have to either keep up or get left behind.

As far as smart phones are revolutionizing the mode of communication and enhancing the levels of interaction between remote and urban people, they are alienating and limiting people interactions, creating inequalities across the globe.

Despite being of importance uniting distant individuals,smart phones have helped extend the gap between close individuals while increasing distance between them.

From the aforementioned, it is apparent that the coming into force of smart phones has hampered oral communication greatly.

In my considered opinion, despite bringing with it advanced computing capability, in the ethic aspect, it is not of much importance to get a smart phone. This is because it will help one distant him/herself from close persons,jeopardized social engagement

Smartphones are addictive phones.

Giving the rapid expansion of the technology industry society is now consuming a lot of technology.

Has their influence and effects now gone to far?

Are they to blame for the deteriorating education levels. Bringing with it advanced learning engines i.e. in build educational information, smart phones is a threat to traditional learning with is heavy influences on individual level of personal development.

At the moment it is evident that not much weight is attached to social media statements as compared to physical statements.  Few individual take social media interactions seriously, this is despite the existence of individuals who value social opinion that a real one. 

Looking back at history, when a type of technology loses its usefulness, we put it aside for something better.

It’s not really our fault. 

There seems to be no doubt then that technology has taken over our lives and many may say for the worse.

I really don’t think that electric cars, VR goggles and new, improved selfie sticks are the true measure of man’s technological progress as a species.

Can a ‘like’ really represent popularity and how others perceive you?’

It is only when we forget that it is us who should be controlling technology and not technology that should be controlling us that we should worry. We have to be accountable to society and ourselves. Or else the very fabric of trust that holds society together can and will fall apart. 

All comments welcome. All like clicks chucked in the bin.