„The world as we know it will soon cease to exist.“ (Blackout M Elsberg) – Can progress mean a step backwards? Are we prepared for a complete blackout?
Barbara Marten - 28.09.2019 @ 11:07
Hey there! Here is our article to the development of civilization. Hope you like it :)
Celina Rotthäuser - 07.01.2020 @ 15:48
Development of civilization
by David Lüer, Pia Boje, HPS Buxtehude/ Germany
“The world as we know is soon to be gone.” (“Blackout” M. Elsberg)
Can progress also involve regression?
Are we fully prepared for the utterly blackout?
The world constantly twirls around like it always have been. Same speed every day.
But the tempo on the planet has changed. It does all the time. The world is dominated by the technical progress, still growing globalisation and the constant urge to change. There is no rest for anybody.
There has to be a new engineering marvel on the market as soon as possible. It is almost like nothing can “grow old”, because it gets replaced by something new immediately:
Something better, bigger, smarter, smaller, handier …
And society?
It gets used to it- because it has to. If not, the people couldn`t keep up. The technical development – the digitalisation has an immense impact on every bodies` life:
At work, school, university, at home – literally everywhere we go. It makes the to not know how to live without phones, laptops, tablets, machines, robots etc. anymore.
It is an addiction nobody can stop. The use of technology cannot be closed up, because everything would break down… because we heavily depend on it…because it is more than less becoming a precondition for living.
It´s not only the addiction to communicate with friends or to be up to date that would impact us if the Internet would collapse. Hospitals, traffic systems and even digitalized schools wouldn’t work anymore. The tempo on earth would suddenly slow down. This sudden slow-down can cause a lot of problems and difficulties since we are a very spoiled society, we´ve got used to get fast answers and with it we got impatient.
In my opinion, the progress the mankind has achieved with the internet is to enormous that their can´t be a massive regression. One small but effective regression could be the analogous documentation of important files like medical records or government secrets to prevent to lose them in a Blackout or in a Cyber-Attack.
Hi,
Our world develops really rapidly and the progress still accelerates. Many new devices and technologies are created and improved every day. Sometimes we are not able to keep up with latest innovations. All those things are invented with prospects of better and easier life for each of us. Although there are so many features that new devices offer, we just cannot use all of them even if they made us do things efficiently.
Some people trust blindly in new technologies and sometimes they cannot think independently. Because of that, the society becomes less conscious and more susceptible to manipulation. Logical thinking and selecting information are really important because without them, we would be like robots doing our jobs automatically.
Special effects have enormously/ incomparably improved for last 20 years, films are more realistic and people prefer watching them to reading books.
People “write” only on keyboards, really seldom on paper using pens or pencils and they might forget how to do it correctly because of computer auto-correction. Sometimes tapping buttons is the only thing people do all day at work and later at home. Drawing, using electronic devices, is also possible and later you can print it and hang it on the wall, but it is not the same as when you get dirty while making a painting. Sculptures can also be created in a computer program and later printed on a 3D printer. However, it is really not the same as looking for materials and touching them with your hands. Fewer and fewer people can create things on their own. Children stop creating things and games because they can simply have them bought in a shop. “But there is no shop anywhere where one can buy friendship, and so men have no friends anymore.” , Antoine de Saint-Exupéry said in a book “The Little Prince”.
In the book “Blackout” by M. Elsberg we observe a situation when electricity is cut off and there is chaos because of that. People are used to everything being organized: we know that when we go to the shop, we can buy everything we want, of course when we have money. However, if something unpredictable happens, we start to panic.
People usually do not have skills to survive on their own. Maybe some of us had survival lessons and know how to make a fire, get food, drinkable water and many other things that are necessary to survive. Most humans cannot do that.
Summarizing, progress can mean a step backwards when it is used incorrectly. We should use technology because it improves our lives, but it should not be the main thing that creates our way of thinking. We are not prepared for a complete blackout because the society would not manage to live with no electricity, as it is shown in the book “Blackout” by M. Elsberg.
Damian Stępak - 07.01.2020 @ 13:41