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Stefan H. Farr

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Debate: Our culture isn't adapting to our rapidly progressing technology.

There is a lot of talk about the current economic crises. Projections, promises or just plain old confusion, everybody seems to have an opinion on when and how it will get resolved or on the contrary how it will not resolve, but rather bring about the end of us.

Personally, I believe that it "can" resolve, but not by traditional economic measures, because the cause of it is not purely economic in nature. I believe, that this crises stems from a profound conflict brought about by the increasing incompatibility of our cultural, social and economic values with the ever more advanced technological progress that we are accumulating. Our inability to culturally adapt to this rapid technological progress is like a dead weight that impedes our metamorphosis as a species altogether.

Consequently, I believe that the next giant leap in our evolution must be a cultural / spiritual / intellectual / social one and not a technological one. Technologically we are way beyond what we can culturally accommodate and so any more progress in this domain will only deepen the conflict rather than resolve it.

Thank you!

Topics: culture economy society technology
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Closing Statement from Stefan H. Farr

It's been a pleasure reading your comments. Thank you very much everybody for the excellent insight.

progress indicator

  • Ezra Scarlet

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    Nov 12 2012: Well yeah have you noticed that it's a device that people instead of learning use as entertainment, and causes a lot of people to become anti-social. Meanwhile the Media keeps uses it to convince people to buy into conformity and very bias unchecked facts.

    Examples Look how people feel the need to broadcast there lives on fb and twitter. Or how the history channel now has shows about gator farms or "Dick Dynasty". How Nelson Mandela, Ghandi, Stephen Hawking, or Da Vinci is an unknown figure to children and urban kids but, everyone has great concern over Kim Kardisian Marriage, Paris Hilton, Snooki, Pauly D, and other stupid celebrities who are famous for ludicris behavior.

    Take the Presindential campaign Ads, which both had really covincing agruements filled with proganda on both sides.

    Finally look at all the ads trying to less stuff you don't need like clothes, cigs, jewelry, junk food, lastest electronics that don't seem that different from the other generations. If your not truly convinced of this last statement then look at this FUNNY LINKS

    http://youtu.be/UHoZRr1dvOo
    http://youtu.be/FhljTM6vuEU
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    Linda Zhou

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    Nov 10 2012: YEAH, agree ^ ^
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    Linda Zhou

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    Nov 10 2012: Thanks for your reply. But you should know that this can happen in china.
    really. Educators or civil sevents usually do this kind of stuff.
    in our city, a second-level one in china, the same road is being digged and fixed over and over again. Why do they do this? If they want to make a profit, they have to apply a project to get the money from a higher lever govenment. and sometimes they give the projects to their relatives thus they can make an indirect profit.
    My point is: in some countries, policy-making can misguide our society.

  • David Green

    • +1
    Nov 10 2012: I'm currently teaching in Bhutan,a country that joined the online world not many years back. The impacts are going to be huge here because the generational gap in knowledge is so big. I'm trying to arrange a placement with the Bhutan Centre for Media and Democracy with funding from the UN to try to get involved in spreading awareness of media literacy and the impacts of the new technologies that about to come bursting through the interpipes. It's a very interesting situation here - the issues you describe are hypertrophic.
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    Linda Zhou

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    Nov 10 2012: Interesting thing is that I still remember the time when the Education Department of our city is struggling of whether students in junior high should use calculators. Even then, I thought the adult can be so hesitant and ridiculous.
    First, we are encouraged to use the calculator and everyone is demaded to buy one powerful Casio calculator which can even calculate the sin, cos of trangle; then, we are not allowed to use that. At last, the calculator is back.
    Maybe, the officials are just using us to make a profit, but this really leads to a contraversial question.
    Or maybe these specialists were trying to do a good thing, but in my view this constant left-and-right change should not be tested on teenagers.
    Many people in China say that our generation is one that is just like the guinea pig. How sad it is...
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      Fritzie Reisner 100+

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      Host
      Nov 10 2012: Hi, Linda. I don't think this confusion over calculators was related to profit. Rather there was a dispute among educators as to whether mental math skills are vital and would be impaired by excessive use of calcultor, whether the thinking that develops to provide facility with arithmetic calculations is foundational to understanding algebra and higher mathematics, and so forth.
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        Linda Zhou

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        Nov 10 2012: Thanks for your reply. But you should know that this can happen in china.
        really. Educators or civil sevents usually do this kind of stuff.
        in our city, a second-level one in china, the same road is being digged and fixed over and over again. Why do they do this? If they want to make a profit, they have to apply a project to get the money from a higher lever govenment. and sometimes they give the projects to their relatives thus they can make an indirect profit.
        My point is: in some countries, policy-making can misguide our society.
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          Fritzie Reisner 100+

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          Host
          Nov 10 2012: I understand that people will often promote their commercial interests in any country.

          I shared what I know about the calculator issue generally just in case you didn't know that there is a genuine pedagogical question involved.

  • James McGuiness

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    Nov 9 2012: Hi Tyler. I'm not much of a FB user but I'm proficient enough to search and after a while I gave up--I couldn't find you.

    My FB locaction is : http://www.facebook.com/#!/RareBird0

    Let's knock this around a bit. This subject is where so much potential lies. Hope to hear from you. Jim

  • Jonathan Gronli

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    Nov 7 2012: I wouldn't necessarily write off the cultural evolution due to technological advancement. After all, even the simple art of the written or spoken word is a form of technology, which allowed an actual cultural and human evolution. Technology is just another thing that we can use to do the exact same thing that we have been doing for thousands of years, which is adapting to not only our environmental needs but also adapt to what culture(s) arise. The thing with human evolution is that we are evolving on par with our technology. The thing that isn't happens to be multiple sectors of the business world that continually tries to crush many of the ways that the consumers, especially creative ones, can use various forms of technology.
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    John Moonstroller 20+

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    Nov 7 2012: Culturally speaking, if we took all the current technology away from the kids today, the resulting psychosis would drive us into a health-care hole in the ground. The current generation has never known a day without a cell phone or computer. To suddenly resort to doing arithmetic in their minds would break their brains.

    The older generation have become so dependent on this technology that to go back to the old ways would cause many of them to take early retirement. I say early retirement because they would realize the resources they would need for the transition to old ways of running an office do not exist outside their generation. The human power to accomplish it no longer exists. It would be temporary chaos.

    Yes, culturally we have fully adopted the new technology and any new understandings about our reality will be as a result of using and devising even more powerful technology. We are seeing the tiny fluctuations of the atom. Soon, we will see them in HD resolution, in real time.

    The technology of the future will be easily accepted by this current generation and implemented into their lives with an ease the older generation could only imagine through science fiction.

    I started down this road in 1978, pushing the new technology onto my generation who accepted it with great reluctance, having nothing but foresight to idealize it's usefulness. The current generation doesn't need foresight, they have experienced the results of new technology. In the near future, culture will have a global tone and color. Indeed, the notion of cultural is undergoing an ideological shift from what we used to call cultural nationalism.

    Two or three generations from now, the word "Culture" will start to fade into obscurity through lack of use. It will become an epistemological artifact like the word "thou" or "thine".

    I add, "welcome back Obama!!"

  • James McGuiness

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    Nov 5 2012: You're right. But technology is the only medium which can facilitate an encompassing philosophy able to create a "new literacy" which can then enable a new "modernity". It would take a hundred years and a lot of luck to educate an esoteric few on what the unique powers of non-linear communication are versus all that have passed before if we stick to conventional communications methods.. I feel we are so on the same wave length though.

    Firstly, society doesn't even understand itself--it doesn't know that technology use actually changes our capacity--that this thing called "neuroplasticity" isn't some "reactive" provision to mend our brains in case we get hit in the head but is instead the constant provisional mechanism for new capacity in which we grow new interconnections that allow us to "use" or even create each new level of technology. This is a monumental dynamic around which education must be reformed (among a few others) because no human who fails a test on day is hopeless. To the contrary, with the proper remedy, the same person could become a super-achiever.

    I'd really like to converse with you about this but TED boxes are so confining. I'll offer my e-mail jim_mcg@verizon.net and assure you no obligation. I have partially written the philosophy that makes for the development of a synthesis of an "ethical intermediary" where, with a few new forms of journalism and dialog, make for that means to establish the "new literacy and its engine of acceptance" I can sense that you believe is necessary. I hope to hear from you. I'm sure you know what we are on is the fulcrum upon which the future of the Digital Revolution teters. There's big money there too.

    • Tyler Leonard

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      Nov 8 2012: Do you have a Facebook? I'm from Piqua, Ohio. Look me up.

  • Tyler Leonard

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    Nov 1 2012: One thing I think we could do, is change the way we teach kids. They are our future after all. As long as we come up with a way to teach them how and why we got here, things will work it's self out. I was on google earth one day and thought, why don't someone make one just like that, but it goes form the beginning of earth till now. Then you could go to the day Jesus was crusifide. Then you can go see what's happening in other parts of the world. School then can make a lesson that could teach the whole world.

    Another way we could help is by making are kids bilingual. One reason society to me is falling is, the language difference in a society full of so many. Studies have shown that kids with bilingual parents will speak both language. They learn them just by listening. So it is safe to say, you could record a different language and play them when they are in the belly till they are old enough to read and write it.
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    Bill Matthies

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    Oct 31 2012: At the risk of addressing this too theoretically, I get very suspicious whenever I hear pronouncements about undefined things such as "culture", "society", etc. My answer and that of everyone else has everything to do with the definition of those terms that I and they have in mind when we respond.

    For example, my response to the statement "Our culture isn't adapting to our rapidly progressing technology" depends entirely on which "culture" I'm thinking of. I live in Orange County in Southern California along with approximately 3 million others. In contrast my wife's aunt and uncle who we visited this summer, live in Marshal County Minnesota with a total population of just over 10 thousand residents. OC County has 3 cities each with populations that are no less than 10 times the entire population of Marshal County. Orange County's size is 56% that of Marshal County.

    Knowing nothing more than this you can imagine that discussions regarding the "culture" of Marshal County versus OC County will be very different. Indeed, such discussions of a city in north OC County will be as well from those in south OC County even though those cities are no more than 15 miles apart..

    Stefan said, "I believe, that this crises stems from a profound conflict brought about by the increasing incompatibility of our cultural, social and economic values with the ever more advanced technological progress that we are accumulating", followed later by "Consequently, I believe that the next giant leap in our evolution must be a cultural / spiritual / intellectual / social one and not a technological one."

    I'm not sure we can separate technology from questions of culture, spiritual, intellectual, and social context, at least I know I can't. But I do think he is right in suggeting that assuming technology alone to be the key to our problems, which it often appears we do, is also wrong.
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      Danger Lampost 10+

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      Oct 31 2012: One of the things I like about the way Stefan phrased this question, is that for me the question works at all scales of culture and society from the smallest to the largest. So I assumed the usual definitions of culture and society that work at all scales. But Stefan also includes an intriguing reference to a "metamorphosis as a species altogether," implying a global scope, as if all the disparate cultures might eventually link up some how to evolve.

    • James McGuiness

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      Nov 5 2012: Hi Bill. I get your point about those terms. How do you feel if instead of saying our culture or our society or even our species or world "needs" x,y or z, we said that a technological phenomenon has occurred which offers answers to trillion dollar problem--massive sums of which we keep squandering because we need a new literacy above standard literacy and above technological literacy which is not esoteric -- which technology itself could deliver, which could help a new modernity reveal itself people will want to buy into and get for their children, and that this technology itself is now so cheap and so pervasive it is possible to achieve this new literacy in just a few years with just a few players?
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    Yuddandi Sivasubramanyam

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    Oct 31 2012: technology has changed our living style besides our civilization. our culture is the backbone of our attitude and enhancing factor of humanity. technology is for our life comfort. it is purely physical. the culture part of it is purely inner and spiritual. it must not deteriorate at the cost of modernization/technology. well civilized/modernized man with no cultural values is not worth mentioning for the benefit of living planet.
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    Joey Long

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    Oct 31 2012: @ non tech: I think very often and more and more our discoveries DO lead to more roads being opened up from there on adding to the complexity of that which we have to navigate as our knowledge increases. That, in and of itself is a problem and, yeah, there often end up being more than originally led here but maybe we can eventually work out all the problems if we're working on a greater number of them and at an ever increasing rate. ;D YaY! No more problems. LOL :)
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    Lejan . 30+

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    TED Translator
    Oct 28 2012: In my view, it is not technology itself our culture got problems to cope with, it is its application more and more individuals have problems to digest.

    To me, the purpose of technology is to better and to ease our lifes, and much of it does, but it also started to work against us and to enslave us in order to maintain our benefits.

    Somewhere in the past we crossed a tipping point in which our technology began to use us and to accelerate the speed of our lifes way beyond healthy limits for most of us.

    To me there is no coincidence in rising numbers of depression disorder, burn out syndroms, stroke and heart diseases (except unhealthy diets) and personal isolation tendencies.

    Technically we should be in the most convenient and fulfilling times our species ever attained. But practically it seems, that most of us does not feel and experience it this way.

    So one may argue, that we, humans, can not value anything we never lacked or missed. And I think this got a lot to do with it, especially for generations who exclusively thrived in abundance. Yet nevertheless there are also other reasons causing the decay of personal contentment.

    This is quite a wide field, but it got to do with speed and application of our technology not with technology itself (besides weapons, of course).
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    Feyisayo Anjorin 50+

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    Oct 27 2012: "We need to combine ancient wisdom with new technologies. That's all we need." -Paulo Coelho
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    Feyisayo Anjorin 50+

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    Oct 25 2012: We have allowed the world to decline to a place where moral and ethical issues are so vague that any depravity can be well defended by sophistry.
    And we have placed too much emphasis on science and inventions; on knowledge and fancy gadgets; on materialism and the acquisition of wealth; all obsessively pursued at the expense of the human soul; most of the pursuits are at the expense of human relationships and dignity.
    P W Botha once said "Adapt or Die". I think its time to start making efforts to adapt; as it is now, we are not even trying.

  • Jan Seidler

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    Oct 25 2012: Hello there,
    quite right, for years we have had the capability to transform our socio-economic system into one that is actually sustainable, but our values got/get in the way. It is also about changing what we value most. A value war, if you will. Interestingly enough though, for years there has been a man called Jacque Fresco that has been working on social design, and intelligent management of resources. Probably the following shows the ideas in a more understandable way.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwJaLFMf7IA
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    R H 20+

    • 0
    Oct 25 2012: As you infer, I too believe we are on the verge of a transformation unlike any in history. We no longer are just 'making tools', we are 're-assembling' our universe and our definition of what it means to be human. Unfortunately, just as no laws are made until there's a loss, we will probably be overwhelmed by our abilities before we can refocus our energies towards the ultimate importance of social understanding, cooperation, and wisdom in living.

  • Jose V Balaguer

    • +1
    Oct 25 2012: "Our inability to culturally adapt to this rapid technological progress is like a dead weight that impedes our metamorphosis as a species altogether."
    I totally agree with You.
    I know people who surely will run and hide under a stone if they discover that siri exists.
    Due to the astonishing diferences in technological knowledge the cultures' evolution run at diferent speeds generating huge internal stresses in our societies.
    Apart of that I see that we as people are not as rational as we think because having the knowledge, the technology and the power we still use them in stupid ways. We know about global warming but d'ont do anything serious about that. We know about economic theories and we go in debt. The market makers crash the markets.

    In my opinion the main problem is the lack of direction as a whole Humanity.

    We waste almost all of our lifetime and resources going to nowhere and that has to change. I think we have to define our goals for the future: our evolution.
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    Lindsay Newland Bowker 50+

    • +2
    Oct 23 2012: Culture changes very slowly even in response to laws..witness the lingering resentment in the deep south to civil rights legislation or lingering corporate resentment of fair wage legislation, So when culture is slow to change even to adapt the law of the land, we should not be surprised when a new , even transformational technology or innovation,n doesn't permeate culture in depth or allow the full realization of its potential.

    If the purpose is to change culture ( rather than just sell product or in the ca of laws to force compliance through enforcement actions), then the cultural acceptance has to be an intentional focus at the outset (which raises its own set of questions and issues.)

    Most modern constitutions do not seek or embrace the idea of cultural homogeneity even though they do reflect a new consensus on certain aspects of shared community and shared national values. The engineering of a massive cultural spiritual transformational shift is certainly beyond government and apparently beyond existing religious institutions.

    As a contemplative I hear this idea of massive dynamic shift often expressed . Sometimes as the next stage of evolution of humanity, of human kind and perhaps there is some evidence here and here that this is happening but I don't really see that or expect that.

    Any individual can decide to only purchase what is needed..what is durable, practical, useful, essential..to use all resources wisely ( e.g. ,not ever buy bottled water ever again. boycottingg genetically engineered food products) to be personally responsible for what we rely on institutions to do ( teach our children, care for our elderly, deal with ) and enough of us do that as individuals we will change what is produced and how it is disrtibuted and at hat proint the cultural shift will have been effected. .

    We bring that shift about by making wise choices one by one not by advocating for or waiting for a shift.
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    cst commonsense

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    Oct 23 2012: Well Stefan, I think you have posed THE CRUCIAL question - and thus; will the human race survive in any sort of sensible fashion? I have spent my life considering this question, and now, I think I can see the end game within the next generation or two. This is because of technology, as you say. This will deliver, in the next lurch of human ascent, from agriculture, animal power, steam, transistor, information...to the final push. All previous technical revolutions have managed to lever man's ability to 'produce much more efficiently'. But the next lurch will take most humans out of the loop - and this really does change everything - practically and therefore, consequently, culturally. As with all moments in time, historically and now, we are so 'up to our eyes' in solving immediate issues, we really cannot see further ahead easily. And therefore we fail to plan, the human race are poor long term planners anyway - but we are great at reacting - and will this lead us to nirvana?

    Perhaps a view from the future is the best way to understand what we really face (and its not pretty) see: Level 2 history notes Nov 25th 2199 (I hope it is thought provoking).

    http://www.commonsensethinking.co.uk/philos.html#capitalism

    JP
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    Theodore A. Hoppe 200+

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    Oct 23 2012: We are adapting, you may not like the speed or the direction, but you are also assuming that we can control our adaptation.
    Can we?
    It seems to me that the biosphere self organizes and we are just a very very tiny part of it.
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      cst commonsense

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      Oct 23 2012: Absolutely - we are just a small part of the biosphere - and, totally inconsequential to Mother Nature!

      But, equally - are you, as a sentient being, (not personally, but as a member of the human race), prepared to let Mother Nature go her own way and we just play along? Surely not - Nature gave us the ability to think - should we not use that facility to out-think Mother Nature? We need to take on Nature, Is this possible? This is, I believe, the real question.

      See: The Human Contradiction,
      http://www.commonsensethinking.co.uk/humancontradiction.html

      JP

  • bart hsi

    • 0
    Oct 23 2012: The new technology of automation and robotics is upon us regardless of whether we wanted it or not. Some people worried about the "greed" of the innovators of such new technology. But I don't think that is the really important matter. The new tech in the past such as electricity, telecommunication, automobiles and airplanes, did make someone rich, but at most the patents or makers of these products either expired or died, but all of us still enjoy such comfort/convenience without even knowing who were the inventors of them. So the matter of whether these innovators should have their fair shares or not is rather trivial, would you agree?.
    As to the problem of the harmony or adaptation of our cultural life with the new tech, I would make a suggestion. We all know that we also have a population aging problem which not only poses a financial burden of the elderly population on the younger generation, it also makes up a very unhappy population of elderly who are lonely, poorly attended, and sometimes left sick without nursing attention. A solution to this is to construct a group of condominiums, each consists of an old fashioned "large family" with elderly and younger families. The elderly will have high tech assistance so that they can move freely around and have automated food services. They can even "attend" meetings, church services and entertainment, in house, by the teleconference technology. They also could make shopping trips or attend a chat or bridge party in their own room. All these new tech can be managed by the assistance of the teenagers withing the condo. This arrangement not only benefits the elderly, who in turn can also serve as tutors, counselors or companions for the children in the same condo too. In summary, we should return to the old times when people usually live in a large family where the interaction between the grandparents and the grandchildren benefits each other while without the heavy physical labor for the caretakers.

  • Dan Conine

    • +1
    Oct 22 2012: Our culture IS a form of technology. To understand what is wrong with humans, you first have to determine what you are evaluating. Any species lives based on its ability to be useful to its own future. If not, it goes extinct. Humans invented a technology unconsciously called "imagination". It is a useful extens ion of the memory process which creates a model universe based on the information we collect during development. Upon physical maturity, the human moves their id/ego into the model universe and avoids the real universe at all costs. Before the industrial revolution created so much wealth (mostly by stealing it from our future selves with debts and fossil resources), humans created tricks of community, culture, and religion to fool ourselves into not being too consumptive (greed, sloth, etc. were frowned upon). With the freedom of wealth came greater detachment from Malthusian needs, and thus, greater detachment from reality. As with all civilization processes, the end result is that generations of people who live within a refined, homogenized isolation of society do not have a clue about what it took to create and maintain that stable artificial environment, so it fails and the fringe members of the species start over again. The mean Mean do not "evolve". As with any evolutionary process, the middle of the curve is adapted to PAST environments, and some few lucky members on the outer limits of the bell curve MIGHT be adapted to living more generously(the opposite of consumption is not frugality, but generosity) and sensibly.
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    Can Ulusoy

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    Oct 22 2012: ı agree with you but in the 21st century people don't care holy things such as bible or koran...corruption is everywhere notably in the cultural field people are afraid of everything we live in our small worlds without thinking ı think technology is a very little part of the situation
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    Tapio Hurme

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    Oct 21 2012: I agree Stephan, but I offer a different point of view to consider: The conflicts are here today as the "most important" cultural publications like Bible or Koran etc. are not up-to-dated by adapting our rapidly progressing technology. "Priests" and theologies have difficulties to follow the latest developments in science - as well as scientists - too. For example famous "Logos hymn" is not up-to-dated concerning the beginning of everything. The Bible and Koran are only translated to the latest language tricks, but never up-to-dated based on the results of science.

    This situation is really sad as the people do not understand the original contexts as such any more, but on the same time they are ready to fight against rapidly progressing technology, because they do not understand modern science. If the problem with the "holy texts" and science is fixed with the aid of persistent deep co-operation, then we can stop wars caused by "different cultural backgrounds and religions"
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    Tim Thornton

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    Oct 21 2012: We each represent our own distinct beliefs arising from our families and cultures. These beliefs bring those of the flock together but usually separate us from the rest. Some of us do not want to forsake our beliefs no matter what the economic crises brings.

    Technology is purposefully replacing our toil of brain and brawn with ever improving machines. This is a good thing if we all shared in those gains. Some hold fast to the belief greed is good. I am certain greed is grotesque for its creed to purposely exclude others for its own survival .. while want is wonderful and drives our technological efforts. Where one person’s want will drive them to successes this is good indeed but when they then keep all of that gain for themselves just because they believe this is fair—is bad! Of course it was their sweat that made it but this is the very lie that must be destroyed. This is the belief that is deeply ingrained in most of us but must go if we are going to take that next evolutionary step. The belief I purpose to replace greed: if you make a gain and I make a gain that we will share so we both gain both gains. It’s not the righteous form but it’s a step in the righteous direction. Would you not seek to replace my hard labor if I could do the same for you? Symbol me this: Greed is Grotesque!
    http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation.html
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