A Fake's Progress

If you’re a fan of “Star Wars,” you’ve probably noticed that every planet in the galaxy, whether desert, lush or frozen (the only options in the Lucas universe), seems to have at least one place where travelers of all species can hang out and drink. Whether it’s the Cantina on Tatooine or Maz Kanata’s tavern on Takodana, anyone with something resembling a butt and something resembling a mouth is able to sit and imbibe with other special effects in relative peace.

This indicates a very advanced civilization, because in actual human history, every time members of one race, group or tribe encounter members of another, the result is always hostility, violence and subjugation. Every time.

But historically, we keep expanding the scope of us in our us vs them struggles. First it was families or klans. Then tribes and villages. City states. Nation states. All leading up to the world wars, pitting alliances against each other. There’s a clear trend toward taking an increasingly broader view of our cultural identity.

Likewise, we’ve gone from believing the universe revolves around us, literally, to seeing ourselves as part of an ecosystem, one of many, in which many organisms and natural forces help to keep the balance that sustains our … and other … lives.

So there is such a thing as human progress. There is a right side of history.

And Trump isn’t on it.

Progress?

Back in the quaint era known as the 1970's, our ancestors used primitive computing machines called computers.  These were clunky devices about the size of two or three refrigerators side-by-side, with disk drives the size of washing machines.  The ancients interacted with these devices by typing on keyboards, and looking at displays of numbers and text.

And what did they do with these primitive computers?  They could communicate with each other by email and messaging.  They could manipulate information in databases and spreadsheets.  They could access files on other computers, create beautiful typeset documents, manage calendars, contact lists and other personal information, and write programs to do just about anything else they needed.

In other words, they could pretty much do what we do with our gadgets today.  But now we run on smart phones and tablets with graphical displays and multi-touch interfaces.  We drag icons around and flick our fingers on the glass to carry out actions that used to require typing.

So pretty much all we've accomplished in the past 30 years is eye candy. Literally ...

Left: Mike and Ike Berry Blast candy;
Right: standard OS X "OK" button.

Sure, devices have gotten smaller and faster, but much of that increased speed now goes to drawing all the cool buttons and  handling all those multi-touchy things.  Ask yourself ... is your [computer | tablet | phone] too fast for you?  Didn't think so.

So in the first 30 years or so of electronic digital computers, from World War II to the 1970's, almost all of the key technologies of today ... Arpanet (later Internet), email, spreadsheets, databases, personal computers, the mouse, Microsoft and Apple and Oracle, video games, computer animation ... were created.

And the 30-some-odd years since then?  The Web, Google and portable devices.

So remember that next time someone says the pace of technology is increasing.

EDIT:  This post is really from May 11, 2011.  For some reason, Blogger decided to change the posting date when I edited the keyword list.