Thursday, August 25, 2011

no differences here!

Although it is evident that in the modern world, there are huge differences in science and/or technology compared with any preterit time, I will, in this post, claim that these only represent changes in form, whilst humanness remains the same. I believe I have mentioned my position in previous posts, but in any case, it is based in the lack of changes in what I will call the "human hardware". In other words, amazing changes can be developed in technology: thus my son plays with a little Nintendo, whilst at the same time, people browse the Internet and in a second can be connected with a friend in China, and in another, reading the news in the New York Times. On the other hand, the human brain hasn't changed at the same speed than everything else, thus it is always, in the first place, dysfunctional, always craving to catch up with the modern reality. Going to my point: the human brain is limited, processing the overwhelming information that comes through the wire. In practical terms, with potentially infinite more sources to search that a Victorian scholar, the fundamental aspect of the human condition is in essence the same: there is no time to process all of that information! It is fair to argue that in this modern world, somebody who lives in Morocco can be aware of the style of life of a fisherman in the Chilean Patagonia, knowledge that was forbidden to him before. But the fundamental question regarding humanness is: does the modern variety on the information truly change the understanding in a human brain or merely change the flavour of such understanding? Towards the end of a human life the essential aspects of how such life was lived are probably the same than a life from medieval times. God has been replaced by other deities and the Catholic Church now has a different name. The Bible has been rewritten in a digital media but still carries the same amount of information than the illuminations of the Book of Kells. On a more vain aspect; we would watch a football game with the same fervour than the Romans were watching gladiators in the coliseum. Therefore, perhaps with all the information widely available now, still the time is short, the length of a human life far too short to read and grasp everything available.

So a curious insight regarding virtual money, those "numbers" used to buy goods in Amazon or iTunes. There is nothing new here! moving funds from one pot to another using a media like a credit card in a virtual transaction was invented many years ago when money was introduced as the "media" in bartering. Paper money was a promise to pay to the holder in services of goods, so the actual funds, the actual value of work, are virtually transferred from owner to owner in exactly the same way than the digits stored in the hard disks of two different banks. There are not conceptual differences here!