In spite of my attraction to technology and deep seated love of tools and gadgets, I occasionally come across a new item that brings forth the sarcastic alter-ego that I try to suppress.
Apparently there are quite a few people working on boosting the IQ of dumb objects around the house – i.e. making them smarter. One is a light bulb that notifies you when it has burned out by sending an SMS message to your network which then either pops up an annoying message on your computer or calls your cellphone, even more annoying. Another is an idea for a refrigerator that keeps track of what you have in there and reminds you to throw away outdated stuff or to go to the store an restock. Maybe it even re-orders stuff by itself.
Think about it, what will happen to our brains if we no longer have to remember anything? We already have pretty much lost the ability to do multiplication and division. What’s next?
Let’s fast forward 50 years into the future where people don’t make grocery lists anymore, and they don’t have to remember to pay their bills, they don’t have to remember phone numbers and they don’t even have to know their SSN or their anniversary. Everything will be accessible via our personal communicator – no thinking required. We won’t have reference books anymore; pretty much all knowledge will be catalogued and indexed and accessible through some electronic device every where we go 24/7.
50 years ago a person with a great deal of accumulated knowledge was once highly valued. Now, in the year 2055, that knowledge can be fetched by just writing or speaking a query. All that cerebral power that was once constantly expanding will quickly atrophy and the number of ganglia and synapses will wither away, or, in the case of young people, never form in the first place. Administrative personnel will only have to master data entry and retrieval.
I remember Sci-Fi movies where life forms from advanced civilizations were depicted as having huge heads in proportion to their spindly bodies. Now I’m beginning to wonder if the reverse will be true. 50 years from now medical science will keep our bodies very healthy and septuagenarians will no longer be an anomaly. Maybe we will all have great bodies but no brainpower to speak of. The alien with the tiny head played by Tony Shalhoub in Men In Black comes to mind.
I can see it now, I’m cruising down the road in my hovercar and my cellphone beeps. I look over at my data screen, punch a button to retrieve the message and discover to my horror that the third light bulb from the end on my side yard has burned out. Damn! That smart bulb cost me $12. I glance up just in time to see that the guy in front of me has slammed on his brakes and I’m heading right for him! 2.3 seconds later I come to a stop half way up the back of his hovercar and my front fan is chewing up his new AstroBrat something fierce. I’m thinking, “at least I know that I need to stop and get a smart bulb on the way home.”
Search: “human devolution” + “brain size” + causes
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