{"id":20217,"date":"2020-11-19T09:00:54","date_gmt":"2020-11-19T17:00:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=20217"},"modified":"2020-11-20T09:35:58","modified_gmt":"2020-11-20T17:35:58","slug":"the-examined-life-the-thin-line-of-progress","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2020\/11\/19\/the-examined-life-the-thin-line-of-progress\/","title":{"rendered":"The Examined Life<\/em>: The thin line of progress"},"content":{"rendered":"

Modern computers have existed for less than 100 years. In that time, they\u2019ve gone from monoliths that took up entire rooms to the pocket-sized devices we all walk around with today. Smartphones are said to have 100,000 times more processing power than the computer used by NASA in the Apollo 11 mission.<\/p>\n

The advancement in computing technology just blows my mind. I think a lot of this progress can be attributed to the computers themselves\u2014human makes computer, computer helps human make computer smarter. If that\u2019s the case, the speed of technological advancement will only increase. If we went from no computers to supercomputers in 100 years, what kind of tech will we have 50 or 100 years from now? And what will that mean for society?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
The Examined Life<\/em> is a column appearing in every issue of Nexus<\/em> (photo by Ethan Badr\/Nexus<\/em>).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Whether you think social media has been a positive or negative force in our world, you can\u2019t deny that it has had massive influence. Our ability to access it instantly and from anywhere only compounds that. Personal technology has become so pervasive in the west that you could even be at a disadvantage if you choose to not use it.<\/p>\n

But I can only speculate about which technologies will come next (and if you\u2019ve read my column before, you know I love to speculate). Let\u2019s just focus on one possibility: let\u2019s say humanity develops the ability to link computers to the human mind. I think it\u2019s safe to assume that using a technology like that would give an individual an advantage over someone not using it. So, like smartphones, a lot of people would start using it; maybe most of us would.<\/p>\n

But say even half the population decides to go cyborg: the implications are startling. What happens to privacy? If you can link with other people, what happens to personal identity? Could an authoritarian state use it to police thoughts or otherwise control its population?<\/p>\n

With new technology comes new ethical quandaries. And if the smartphone revolution has proved anything, it\u2019s that we don\u2019t have a great system in place to deal with these changes and adjust our policies. And we\u2019ve just touched on one example. What about artificial intelligence? Genetic modification? I know it sounds straight out of science fiction, but the line between sci-fi and science is a thin one and it\u2019s only getting thinner. Let\u2019s be ready.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Modern computers have existed for less than 100 years. In that time, they\u2019ve gone from monoliths that took up entire rooms to the pocket-sized devices we all walk around with today. Smartphones are said to have 100,000 times more processing power than the computer used by NASA in the Apollo 11 mission. The advancement in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":19378,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20217","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-columns","category-webexclusive"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20217","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20217"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20217\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20275,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20217\/revisions\/20275"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19378"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}