What DOES it mean?

Honestly, I thought almost every statistic was kind of cool, thinking that all that information was really interesting, and how amazingly fast we’ve advanced. That was until I saw the statistic about how by 2049, it is predicted a $1000 computer will exceed computational capabilities of a human being. At that point I just got really scared for the future, and realized that even though the video was certainly interesting, it isn’t really that cool. If we could survive before all these technological advances, I don’t understand why we need half of them. A few Fridays ago, I saw a movie in theaters called “Surrogates,” which was basically a futuristic sci-fi movie about how everyone has surrogates that looked 100 percent like a human, that they activate from their homes or work places, using their thoughts and brain power. That way, in the outside world, they can save themselves from being hurt. After seeing the movie, I thought about how our world would be if that came true eventually. Though I thought it might seem far-fetched now, it could be quite possible in the future. The New York Times posted an article July 15th of this year, titled, “Scientists Worry Machine May Outsmart Man.” The article discusses how if we let science take our society too far, we will lose self control. An example they gave was, computer viruses that no one can stop. That would be insane!? Past that even, consequences to computers outsmarting us could turn extremely dangerous. Another example from the article was a self-driving car. We are completely capable of driving cars every single day normally, so why would we need a self-driving one? Or, service robots at home. People honestly need robots to do their chores? All of these examples summed up pretty much sound like ways to rapidly increase laziness and decrease self-sufficiency. It sounds really convenient, but our world would be so incredibly boring. In 2003, BBC posted an article titled, “Have Scientists Gone Too Far?” and it was an article about embryonic cells. Just six years ago, the world thought science had gone past its limit by inventing an incredible way to “edit” cells. The movie Gattaca, from 1997, predicted this science by creating a movie where almost every parent got this “new science” and had children that were literally, perfect. This science, to me, is a blessing and a curse. The optimistic part about this invention is that, any “bad” cells, that could physically or mentally affect the child from living a stable life, could potentially be removed. However, how boring would the world be if everyone was the same? No one would ever be good at one thing – because everyone would be good at everything. That being said, this embryonic cell invention is just as bad as a robot, because rather than having a machine do things for you, you could do things for yourself.. perfectly. Boring. So what does this all mean? It means that science is amazing, and definitely technology is something that we all need, considering we have grown so accustomed to it. However, science can be taken too far. And, I think we should try and slow down the process, because we are risking are own lives if we don’t.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/3040126.stm
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/26/science/26robot.html