[Posted September 13, 2008]

Technology Giveth and Technology Taketh Away

A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami

Running out of memory(ies)

Yahoo! Opinion Sep 11, 2008 - EMILY WALSHE

Who needs a good memory when there's Google?

In increasingly innovative ways, my cellphone renders the need to remember a thing of the past. For example, before I receive an incoming call, pixels dance across my one-inch console to broadcast an image of the person calling, attaching for me a face to the name and hence averting the classic party dilemma.

But the future of everyday cellular, I'm told, is quietly moving beyond asynchronous communication to what mobile digerati are calling memory augmentation – an application for recording, organizing, and archiving the elements of your life and then creating sophisticated indexing taxonomies upon which to search and retrieve its details. "What was that cute song our toddler sang in the bathtub?" "Was that a hint of irony in your brother's wedding toast?" A Bluetooth-like appendage registers and compresses the days of our lives and holds them in cache until we need them again.

"The production of too many useful things" Marx warned, "results in too many useless people." go to story

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Can you live without your cell phone?

Addiction to Technology Hansadutta das

GUEST: Technology makes life easier.

HANSADUTTA: When we do away with old age, disease and death, then life will be "easier." Life is a struggle to counteract birth, old age, disease and death. With all the advancement of technology, these problems still exist, and we are still struggling to counteract them in different ways. Technology has made life more complicated.

GUEST: I'm not sure you can convince anyone to revert to a completely nontechnological society.

HANSADUTTA: We are not proposing a nontechnological society; we are proposing that technology be used for spiritual advancement. more

In the pursuit of technological advancement, life's real business forgotten

excerpt from conversation, Perth, May 16, 1975

PRABHUPADA: That is not civilization. Technological advancement is not civilization. It is the advancement of ugra [materialistic, destructive] knowledge. Real civilization is to advance in Brahman knowledge. If there are brahmanas, that is advancement. This is not advancement because they do not know what is advancement. They have no knowledge that "I have to die, and I have to accept another body after death." They do not know it. So long this body is there, they are trying to have very comfortable position. But they do not know that after this body, he has to accept another body. So how this technology will help him? If, in this life, by technological advancement you live very comfortably, and next life you become a dog, then where is the advancement? That they do not know. Suppose... We have got visa for two weeks?

PARAMAHAMSA: Three weeks.

PRABHUPADA: Three weeks. Now, if in Perth I begin one big skyscraper building and then after three weeks I am kicked out, then is that very good intelligence? I know that I shall remain here for three weeks, and if I begin one skyscraper building, and then, during the time of constructing or, say, after the construction is finished, I am kicked out, then where is that intelligence? Just like Napoleon. He wanted to construct that arch. You have not seen.

PARAMAHAMSA: Yes, I have seen.

PRABHUPADA: But he could not finish it. So this is his intelligence. Such a big man, Napoleon, that is his intelligence. And what to speak of others. Everyone knows that "I will have to die," and when death will come, nobody knows. At any moment it may come. So he will not be able to enjoy what he is doing, but still, he is doing. And his real business is forgotten. His real business is to stop his birth and death process and go back to home, back to Godhead. That is his real business. He does not know the real... Therefore they are called mudhas. Na mam dushkritino mudhah [Bhagavad-gita 7.15]. So it is a civilization of the mudhas, fourth-class men.

DEVOTEE (1): Should the devotees think that "Any moment, I can die"?

PRABHUPADA: Yes. That is a fact. Why they will think? It is a fact. There is English proverb, "There is many dangers between the cups and the lips." You are going to drink tea. The distance is: here is cup and here is lip. There may be many dangers. So suppose in drinking tea there is some choking within the throat, and coughing, you may die immediately. You are so much under the control of nature. Little mistake will cause your death, little mistake. And conditioned life means we commit mistake, we are illusioned, we cheat, and our knowledge is imperfect. This is conditioned life.

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