Skip to main content

Humans and Nature



The next time you log on to the internet, or watch DTV, think of Charles Kao. It was his discovery of how to transmit light signals through glass fibers that led to these and other technological marvels in communications.
When you use your digital camera the next time, thank Willard Boyle and George Smith for their invention of the camera “eye,” which turns light into electrical signals.
As the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences declared upon awarding these three men the Nobel prize in physics, they are “the masters of light” whose work “helped to shape the foundations of today’s networked societies.”
We have done some wonderful things with their marvelous achievements: instant messaging and live news reports from anywhere in the world, transoceanic phone calls for pennies, remarkably clear pictures without film and quantum leap advancements in astronomy, to name a few.
And of course we have created the dark side: pornography on demand, sexting, résumé-killing MySpace photos and instant blackmail.
Why cannot someone come up with quantum leap advancements in human behavior? Is it because humans are unpredictable? But the more scientists discover, the more they realize that nature is also unpredictable.
A “eureka” moment – human beings are just as much a part of nature as trees and rocks! As such, we can expect the unexpected from humans for as long as nature itself exists.
Vive mankind!

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

There Are Only Seven Jokes - Introduction

      The statement “There are only seven jokes – all the rest are variations,” has been around for a long time, but no one ever seems to know what the original seven are. I think I have found the solution to the mystery.       The answer is to be found in an article published in the New York Times on May 2, 1909. Entitled “New Jokes? There Are No New Jokes, There Is Only One Joke,” it goes on to say that all jokes are a distortion, and lists seven categories of distortion. Supposedly every joke will fit into one of the categories. I believe that repetition changed the seven categories into the seven jokes.       Each of my next seven blogs will be devoted to exploring one of the categories. In addition, I shall attempt to give an example or two of jokes which I think fit the category.       You must realize that this article appeared over one hundred years ago, so most of the jokes a...
Post a Comment
Read more
The Future of Work This is for folks who don't mind stretching their imagination a bit. Let me review some of the things that are happening in today's world. A recent news article stated that in spite of the decreasing jobless rate, the number of retail jobs has been dropping rapidly. An article in Business Insider calls it a retail apocalypse. According to the article, in the retail industry, "Since October about 89,000 workers in general merchandise stores have lost their jobs, which is more than the number of people employed in the entire US coal industry." ( http://www.businessinsider.com/retail-job-losses-are-hurting-the-economy-2017-4 ). This loss is due to the rapid expansion of online merchandising. But this is only one example of the point I want to make. According to an article in Scientific American, two professors at Oxford University published a study estimating the probability that "702 occupations would soon be computerized out of exist...
1 comment
Read more

Men Never Outgrow Their Love of Toys

     I guess I am no different from most other men – I like gadgets. I know there are some wonderful toys that I am missing, but if I am sure I have no use for an iPhone, xBox, and the like, I don't buy them. And I decided that even though the ultimate toy, my car, is 10 model years old, it's in good shape, and I don't need a new one. However, we are driving from Pennsylvania to Texas next week, so I did spring for a GPS, and it's really fascinating.      I downloaded the owner's manual and after perusing it, sort of (owners' manuals are to use when you can't figure it out otherwise), I entered my home address into the instrument. I had to test that, so I drove a couple of miles, turned around, and hit the “Home” button.      I was a bit disappointed in the results: it got me home OK, but it didn't take the shortcuts I would have taken. It did keep saying “recalculating” a few times, and when I got within a block or two of t...
Post a Comment
Read more