I've come to some sort of conclusiony idea about all this

[Jasper]

The difference is enormous.  You couldn't hold a conversation over the pony express.  Not very easily, at any rate.  You couldn't live the way you do at all without modern science.  You wouldn't be wearing manufactured clothes with zippers that you picked out of thousands and thousands of garments to suit your taste, and you couldn't have music wherever you liked, eat whatever cuisine you can think of, find people who are into the same things as you, or even laugh at the same jokes, as a lot of humor these days is somewhat connected to the internet.  Information itself is no longer something for scribes and the privileged, it can be found anywhere for the taking.  With diligent self-study you can save yourself several paychecks in remedial college classes, or learn a whole new hobby on a whim.

I could go on, but it'd be tl;dr.

[Verbal Mike]

"just a tool" sounds almost like an oxymoron to me. Tools change everything. Tools change the way we think, the way we live, absolutely everything about our lives.

[Jasper]

Agreed, and I'll raise you a "our minds extend to become the tool".

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Pretty much, but it it illustrates my point easily enough.  And mechanization doesn't hurt the economy, it's just outsourcing that does.  And outsourcing is something any sane government would inhibit to some degree, imo. 

Class, bbs.

But that STILL has nothing to do with your original question, or my answer, or my defense of my answer.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I know several people who don't have computers. Their lives are actually pretty similar to mine, other than that. I mean, of course computers have changed a lot about the way people communicate, and at this point they're pretty ubiquitous, but fundamentally, life itself remains relatively unchanged by them.

Cars, on the other hand, really make a huge difference. Not just in individual lives, but in society.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

Sure the brain is just a tool... my point wasn't that tools don't make our lives easier... but that tools, in and of themselves are not necessarily either good nor bad... just tools. Some people see changes in society and blame them on technology... (OMGZ teh peeples are stupider because they watch the television!!!!!) rather than recognizing that these are the yahoos that would be wasting their time in other ways were the television not there. To me it seems like they confuse the symptom with the cause.

Lincoln and Bush both did the same Bad Thing, technology had little to do with the badness or the possibility of badness. And while phone conversations and letters are in a different format, I would argue that reading a series of letters written by someone living in an age when that was the primary form of communication would be analogous to listening in on todays phone conversations, emails and IM's... except it would probably be easier to pick specific targets and get absolutely everything they communicated.

I agree that our lives are affected in some ways by technology. But technology isn't a trap, evil or anything else... its just a large label that gets applied to all sorts of different tools. Tools always affect how we live, but technology no more so than other tool revolutions like Steam, Bronze, Iron, etc. I think its important that we don't get to excited by (or paranoid of) technology.

[Jasper]

I know several people who don't have computers. Their lives are actually pretty similar to mine, other than that. I mean, of course computers have changed a lot about the way people communicate, and at this point they're pretty ubiquitous, but fundamentally, life itself remains relatively unchanged by them.

Cars, on the other hand, really make a huge difference. Not just in individual lives, but in society.

I'm talking about changes that pervade more deeply than what you buy or what you do for a living.  We have a  different mindset than previous generations because what we are is made of bits and pieces of society's memes that just didn't exist in previous ages.  We're made of different information, and a lot more of it.  Most of the information inside our heads is garbage like television and advertisements, but there's also a lot more useful information in our heads these days too. 

As for cars, it's true.  They have changed everything from where we can go, what we can import and export, to the very air we breathe.  Asthma was not a big deal to us before cars, and neither was the environment.  There are literally more cars in america than there are people, and you cannot meaningfully live in our society without depending on them.  They're a quintessential example of technology changing our lives.

The mechanization and offshoring of all manufacture is tanking our economy. If manufactured goods were still made the long slow way by hand, they would cost a great deal more because they would require more labor by more laborers. I don't think I need to go on, it's an old principle that most people are familiar with.

When it comes down to it, what's tanking our economy is bad business and worse politics, and has nothing to do with manufacturing and only a very little amount to do with offshore manufacturing itself.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

I'm talking about changes that pervade more deeply than what you buy or what you do for a living.  We have a  different mindset than previous generations because what we are is made of bits and pieces of society's memes that just didn't exist in previous ages. 

But, isn't that true of every age, when compared to the ones before it? Otherwise, why would there be a new age? People in the 1800's had much more access to literature and education than previous generations. People in the 1400's found themselves free of the Church for the first time in a thousand years, giving rise to the Enlightenment. Different mindset, different memes.

I guess I attribute the changes to humans and the tools just happen to be what we use to evoke change.

[Jasper]

I'm talking about changes that pervade more deeply than what you buy or what you do for a living.  We have a  different mindset than previous generations because what we are is made of bits and pieces of society's memes that just didn't exist in previous ages. 

But, isn't that true of every age, when compared to the ones before it? Otherwise, why would there be a new age? People in the 1800's had much more access to literature and education than previous generations. People in the 1400's found themselves free of the Church for the first time in a thousand years, giving rise to the Enlightenment. Different mindset, different memes.

I guess I attribute the changes to humans and the tools just happen to be what we use to evoke change.

It IS true of every age, and the exciting thing is that it's been going on long enough to discern what's going to happen next, broadly speaking.

[Triple Zero]

no.

we still can't discern what's going to happen next, and we probably never will.

look at any past prediction of the future, and observe how 99% of them were dead wrong. there are no flying cars, yet everybody has a computer (instead of the stated "i guess a country will only need a couple of tens of them"), nobody in their right mind uses virtual reality, we are not living in outer space, we totally failed to become particularly more enlightened than we were, nobody predicted the internet or mobile text messaging .. etc etc need i go on?

these are quite recent predictions of the future, only a number of decades old, and most of them have turned out to be dead WRONG.

i see no reason at all to assume we have suddenly grown in our predictive power.

(and in fact, reading more of Nicholas Taleb, i see a lot of reasons to assume lack of predictive power is hardwired into ourselves and our reality, and not changing any time soon)

which doesn't mean we can't dream, don't get me wrong.

[Jasper]

How much do you want to bet that information will become intelligent and aware?

[Cain]

How is that related to what 000 asked?

I also take offence to the idea that we have a different mindset, because I don't think we do.  There is nothing to suggest physical changes in our brains from previous generations.  Culturally, we may have adapted in some ways, but culture is about the most flexible part of a person's personality, and often does not override more basic human behaviour, such as territorialism, desire to spread genes, basic survival etc etc.  Culture is the icing on the cake as it were, on a very basic level, we are the same creatures we were 50, 100, 500 years ago.  It can change how many of those basic drives are expressed, but it doesn't stop them from existing.

[Jasper]

The above remark was intended to illustrate a counterexample to 000's post.

You can't separate cultural/intellectual behaviours from basic animal behaviours, in that they correlate into how we behave in practice.  It's not apparent with cultures like ours that are milder and more mutable, but cultural reactions can overpower animal reactions in a lot of cases.

[Cain]

Again, I disagree.  They're subliminated, not denied.  They still exist, they still exert influence and they are still acted out.  Culture acts as a frame, giving shape to the force behind it.  If culture could overcome basic programming, it would be a necessary component of most psychological and psychiatric research, which it isn't.

Also, your counterexample wasn't very good.  000 cited numerous cases where people were wrong, you cited one that may eventually be right.  It doesn't invalidate the idea that prediction is very mostly wrong.  Its one I'm sympathetic too, because my own field is filled with theories that consistently fail to predict the future, but are dearly held on to regardless.

[B_M_W]

Name one activity or aspect of life that is not altered or caused by modern technology.

Gardening. Unless you count hosewater as "modern technology".
Sex, excretion, and other elementary bodily functions.
Knitting.
Most of my other hobbies.

Unless all you use is your bare hands for those things, you are likely using tools (trowel, pots, KYlube, toilets, knitting needles) which were manufactured using modern methods and materials. Thus, "modern technology"

Because technology can mean anything from a flint-knapped clovis point to a superconducting microchip. And by modern I'm assuming you mean within the last 20-30 years or so.