progressive. Our challenge consists of inventing the first part and discovering
the second (Barca, 2008: 45).
Margaret Mead points out that the fast evolution of technology can
drag society into a movement that can be too fast for its structures (cited in
McLuhan 2001: 91). However, instead of an inconvenience, this can be an
advantage if the social, educational and political transformations result in a
better scenario. The shake of social, economic and political bases can
reconstruct a system with more fairness and equality for all the members of
the society. There is perhaps no need to be so pessimistic about our future,
but just be cautious, conscious and in control of the journey we undertake,
thus retaining a forward and a backward glance; that is to say being aware of
what is about to come and also mindful of the evolution and history of the
technology we have created. Continuing the example of cars, McLuhan argues
that in understanding the actual situation of technology we find the same
dangerous experience we might have if we drive only looking through the
rear-view mirror: then we only can see what we have already left behind us,
not what is coming in the future.
Historically, human beings have used technology to be freed from the
tasks that we do not want to do and, in this way, have more time to spend on
other things. Indeed, today we delegate our memory to hard drives, and,
thanks to the programmes we have created, we do not need to calculate
certain scientific problems or imagine solutions. The density of data
nowadays is doubling approximately every eighteen months and this is an
increasing tendency.5 With such a development in technology, it should not
surprise us that the prediction regarding this phenomenon is that machines
will soon achieve self awareness. The experiment to produce quantum
computers, with the ability to go further than the combination of 0s and 1s
and to be able to process notions and abstract terms, is currently an incipient
and ongoing investigation, but it hints at the future (awareness) of
technology. There is even an estimation of the moment when human mental
activities will be a hybrid of biological and technological functions: it is
5 This is a prediction made by Gordon Moore, one of the co-founders of the Intel Corporation, in 1964,
and one that has been so accurate that his prophecy has been named ‘Mooi^s Law’ (Woolgar, 2002: 55).
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