Is Technology really REAL?
Strike against war, for without you no battles can be fought! Strike against manufacturing shrapnel and gas bombs and all other tools of murder! Strike against preparedness that means death and misery to millions of human beings! Be not dumb, obedient slaves in an army of destruction! Be heroes in an army of construction!: Helen Keller. - Source: Told to an audience at Carnegie Hall one year before the United States entered World War I. From 'Declarations of Independence' by Howard Zinn page 75
"We need food and water and they sent us men with guns" : Katrina survivor
When a man dwells on the objects of sense, he creates an attraction for them; attraction develops into desire, and desire breeds anger.
Bhagavad-Gita
Lisa woke with a start. Rastas her cat had jumped up onto the bed and landed on her face. Her alarm clock clattered merrily away as it had done for the last 20 years – a present to herself when she had started her very first job. Rastas took up his favourite position along Lisa’s body with his eyes drilling deeply into hers. Lisa was positive she and Rastas spoke though mainly on a telepathic level. He had wandered into her room nine long years ago and promptly took charge in her life. Lisa never regretted for one moment how this brazen small animal had entered her life as he did – she was still unsure to this day how he had actually come through a locked door.
But as Rastas stared intently at Lisa, she in turn stared intently at her alarm clock like never before. Is technology an illusion too she asked herself?
Clocks, wind up clocks have not changed for hundreds of years. The new electric clocks, apart from being the most basic of electronics, lasted only for 5 unreliable years at most. Even the electric grids used to power houses, cities and electric clocks were woefully undependable.
Cars. Lisa began to see cars in a new light. They too were painted in flashy colours with extra noises and bright lights. But they had not changed since inception. Even the economy in motoring hadn’t changed. They still used the same power sources, still had same mechanical failures. The first Fords that rolled off the assembly line puttered along at 25 mpg. Cars produced in 2007 are lucky to achieve such grand mileage. The only major change see could see with cars was that the normal motorist was unable to fix them due to wizardry of computers. Computers that in essence did not do one single thing of benefit except to add to costs.
Space travel and rockets. Are we to truly believe that dangerous fuel laden rockets and stunning noisy vertical take-offs are the supreme and only method to launch things? The Chinese used sky rockets for celebration and amusement thousands of years ago and still the same principle produced the same results. Even the humble satellites orbiting the planet were still in essence the same technology being used on earth for many years with radio waves and micro waves. The difference was that they were higher up.
And Lisa’s mind explored. Apart from valves and transistors and imprinting wires onto circuit boards, and making things smaller, even the amazing world of electronics hadn’t progressed. Sure many new little inventions keep popping up along the way; however none of these used anything more than existing technology. Even the computer hard drive will always remain a close cousin to the humble reel to reel magnetic tape. And mystique of computers quickly vanished once the binary on/off switching was understood.
And a cursory research shows that most technology and truly stunning inventions arose from a handful of men in the 18th and 19th centuries and into the early 20th century. It was almost as if life’s trinkets were illusions based on simple existing technologies. Something did not add up here.
If anything, any gains in technology only served to make things faster, bigger or smaller – but they were always the same thing.
Gains in medical science have been attributed to surgical skills. An honest investigation into the media hype of wonder drugs and miracle cures quickly shows a scam of the highest level. New drugs don’t work. Thousands still die from cancer and diseases. Dietary and sanitation improvements which limit disease and illness weren’t invented.
The reductions in illnesses and diseases can be easily attributed to improvements in hygiene, water quality and food nourishments. The health improvements occurred before vaccines – not after.
New laws ushered in quietly in midnight law-making sessions that protect drug companies from any law suits due to death/injury caused by their wonder drugs served only to underpin Lisa’s doubts.
Unless of course the more notable inventions/technologies also had a military application too.
It was almost that all of the exciting and innovative inventions had been stopped. Anything of truly amazing worth seemed and benefit to society appeared as if controlled or hidden.