DiogenesTheWiser
Well-Known Member
Historians divide historical time period into ages. Perhaps you've heard of the "stone age" or "iron age." The "Dark Ages" refer to European backwardness after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire. More recently, in America, there was the Gilded Age when capitalism seemed to run amok and a time in which business owners routinely purchased politicians, including presidents.
Even more recently was the Atomic Age, ushered in by American use of the atomic bomb to end WWII. It was characterized by a time of experimentation in nuclear power and use of atomic diplomacy by the world's chief nuke weapons holders.
In the 1990s, after the Internet had been opened to commercial use, Time Magazine and others called the coming age the Information Age. Others have termed it the Internet Age or the Digital Age.
I'm calling it the Post-Cognitive Age, ushered in by smart technology in which machines think for us. When I google something, google anticipates my search terms--that's smart tech in the works. When I'm streaming videos on Netflix, there's nothing on until I pick something in my list--a list generated for me by the wizards at Netflix. More and more in the Post-Cognitive Age, we are seeing automation. If you go to the local mall trash restaurants, for example, like Chillis, Applebees, O'Charley's, Ruby Tuesdays, etc.--all crappy restaurants--you're more likely to be waited on by a "device"--a tablet. It contains pictures of what's available to eat, drink.
More and more, our thinking is being replaced by the work of computers, either the big desktop kinds, or the smaller ones that fit into our pockets (or strap onto our wrists). With the fast availability of information, we don't have to think as much as we used to.
New tech has a way of weaving its way into our lives and affecting us in the business and political worlds. I think Trump is a direct effect of the Post-Cognitive Age. With all this information at our fingertips, and with the corresponding reluctance to have to think about things, people accept buzzwords and catch-phrases all the more easily, like MAGA, and the "best blacks" and the "best women..." And more and more Americans identify with a politician who, like them, says that "thinking is bad" and that he "loves the poorly educated."
When historians, if they exist, 100 or 150 years from now look back on our society at this current time, I think they'd be unable to ignore the evidence that people today don't want to think and are gradually ceding that human activity to machines. This will continue to have great effects on our society, tearing down old institutions and erecting new ones.
Years ago, I kinda saw the writing on the wall and I left higher education forever. There's really no need for higher ed any more. All info can be attained through our devices. We can learn how to build a dam by reading about it online. We can take out somebody's appendix by reading enough Wikipedia pages. Really, all that people need to learn to be safe in the Post-Cognitive Age is basic literacy, typing, and coding.
Eventually, we might even think past society altogether.
To sum up the range of humans' importance on thinking, Rene Descartes, one of the greatest of all Western philosophers, and without whose thought our computer revolution could not have occurred, claimed in 1644 "I think, therefore I am." It seems that nowadays, the opposite is more apt. "I don't have to hink, therefore I am."
Even more recently was the Atomic Age, ushered in by American use of the atomic bomb to end WWII. It was characterized by a time of experimentation in nuclear power and use of atomic diplomacy by the world's chief nuke weapons holders.
In the 1990s, after the Internet had been opened to commercial use, Time Magazine and others called the coming age the Information Age. Others have termed it the Internet Age or the Digital Age.
I'm calling it the Post-Cognitive Age, ushered in by smart technology in which machines think for us. When I google something, google anticipates my search terms--that's smart tech in the works. When I'm streaming videos on Netflix, there's nothing on until I pick something in my list--a list generated for me by the wizards at Netflix. More and more in the Post-Cognitive Age, we are seeing automation. If you go to the local mall trash restaurants, for example, like Chillis, Applebees, O'Charley's, Ruby Tuesdays, etc.--all crappy restaurants--you're more likely to be waited on by a "device"--a tablet. It contains pictures of what's available to eat, drink.
More and more, our thinking is being replaced by the work of computers, either the big desktop kinds, or the smaller ones that fit into our pockets (or strap onto our wrists). With the fast availability of information, we don't have to think as much as we used to.
New tech has a way of weaving its way into our lives and affecting us in the business and political worlds. I think Trump is a direct effect of the Post-Cognitive Age. With all this information at our fingertips, and with the corresponding reluctance to have to think about things, people accept buzzwords and catch-phrases all the more easily, like MAGA, and the "best blacks" and the "best women..." And more and more Americans identify with a politician who, like them, says that "thinking is bad" and that he "loves the poorly educated."
When historians, if they exist, 100 or 150 years from now look back on our society at this current time, I think they'd be unable to ignore the evidence that people today don't want to think and are gradually ceding that human activity to machines. This will continue to have great effects on our society, tearing down old institutions and erecting new ones.
Years ago, I kinda saw the writing on the wall and I left higher education forever. There's really no need for higher ed any more. All info can be attained through our devices. We can learn how to build a dam by reading about it online. We can take out somebody's appendix by reading enough Wikipedia pages. Really, all that people need to learn to be safe in the Post-Cognitive Age is basic literacy, typing, and coding.
Eventually, we might even think past society altogether.
To sum up the range of humans' importance on thinking, Rene Descartes, one of the greatest of all Western philosophers, and without whose thought our computer revolution could not have occurred, claimed in 1644 "I think, therefore I am." It seems that nowadays, the opposite is more apt. "I don't have to hink, therefore I am."
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