So I just found his gem of a website that only begins to describe what is wrong with the American diet. When browsing through the website, please keep in mind that at some point someone thought that the food you are looking at was a good idea.

The technological advancements of the past century are positively astounding when you think about it. The creation of computers-creating ways of storing the information that we can’t keep in our heads, giving us the ability to perform complex tasks in seconds-coupled with the advent of the internet-allowing us to communicate instantly across vast distances with any number of people-has created some drastic changes to humanity.

Socially, we have created a feeling of instant gratification, the ability for us to instantly watch any video we want through YouTube or buy anything we could want without leaving the house and have it delivered to our door the next day through amazon. Physically, we have changed our brains, evolving with the advancing technology, to move portions of our memory out of our head and into the hard drives of our computers, giving us the ability to recollect any piece of information verbatim so long as we are within reach of our keyboards.

The problem with this is, I seem to have been struck last night with a serious case of external amnesia.

My laptop’s hard drive burnt itself out last night, beyond the point of repair. My options are to either buy a new hard drive, windows, office, and an antivirus, or get a new computer. I have potentially had albums of music and pictures, entire classes worth of documents, essays, papers, and research, YEARS of writing samples, and any number of video games, save files, and other applications.

In other words, I can’t remember a thing right now.

Our societies reliance on our external memories has some rather glaring issues. As I’m experiencing right now, the possibility to lose thousands of dollars and thousands of hours worth of time and money is a real threat that we seem to not take that seriously. I hope that my information got backed up onto my external hard drive (i.e. my external external memory), and if it hasn’t, what can I do? I am forced into a situation that requires me simply to say “I’ve lost years of my life, and I have to move on.”

If we lose our internal memory, this isn’t even a choice. Loss of internal memory simply isn’t something that anyone cope with, there are certain things that just don’t come back. I wrote down all of my stories, essays, and research because I don’t have the brain capacity to remember all of it, but now that my external memory has decided to forget all of that, how is any different from losing my internal memory?

I could be over-reacting, computers crash all the time. But maybe we should consider the possibility that we have become too reliant on our external memories.

image courtesy of technabob.com

The other day I was engaged in a rather serious conversation about the philosophy of science with some people who do that kind of thing for a living (yes, philosophers of science exist) and I had to stop in the middle of it to declare “See, this is what I am thinking: you don’t understand the geek culture at all.” It was at this moment that I realized a few things: 1) I could not do philosophy for a living, but more importantly 2) Geek culture is really fun. A lot more fun, almost all of the time, than professional philosophy.

Most likely if you’re on this blog you are at least familiar with the geek culture if not a full-fledge member yourself. As it is, it seems to be expanding slowly into the mainstream–slowly becoming popular to spend half your day on a computer, to know the latest gadget, and to have grandois dreams of the future. 

I have a fascination with geek culture and have been watching it for a long time and consider myself an active part in it, even though I do so as a writer. The whole ideology surrounding this group of scientists, computer programmers, gamers, and sci-fi readers is actually deeper and more significant than you would think. I think we could all benefit from some of their outlook. By way of introduction, here are eight things that are incredibly interesting about geeks worldview that will prove relevant to our discussion (things you may or may not know):

1) Speculation is fun.

Science has always been about the search for something greater, for some gem of knowledge that will make the world make more sense. Science news magazines, blogs, and journals are full of these discoveries being poured out every day. But more particularly, every scientist and engineer I know lives for the speculation, for the wondering about what is next, what could be done, and how it could be done. They always have this sort of sense that there is more hiding beneath the surface and that the greatest fun in life is digging down to find it. 

2) There is more to life than money (Halo pwnage skills, duh!)

We all know that money drives our society, giving us a faux purpose for our daily activities. This is true, to some extent, for the Geeks who want the latest TV or gadget. However, I would suggest that most geeks see life at least a little deeper than that–as something to be excited about, as a quest for knowledge, or as a never ending game that is simply fun in itself. 

3) Gadgets are extensions of yourself. 

We can’t deny it anymore: your cellphone and your brain have become inextricably connected. For most geeks, this is a simple fact. For the rest of us, we’re just in denial.

4) Looks don’t matter when you can get a l33t avatar (There are many ways to portray yourself in the minds of others, beyond mere looks)

While it is mostly (maybe…) a stereotype to say that all geeks are…less than blessed in the looks department, it isn’t like they just sit around moping about it. No, they just log on to the latest game and spend a few hours building themselves an awesome fictional front. I include this here because, honestly, we could all use a little less emphasis on our looks and more emphasis on who we are and the value we add to this world. Computers and online fronts, for all their “impersonal” nature, allow us to bypass the stereotypes and flash judgments of face to face conversations and see more of what is on the inside (assuming you’re willing to throw it out there).  

5) If the world isn’t how you want it to be, change it.

The best thing about technology is the amount of influence it has in driving the world forward. Although the extent to which technology drives history is debated, there is no doubt that there is a fundamental mentality beneath the technological enterprise: we can make the world a better, easier place to live in. I have found that with scientists and engineers, nothing is out of reach: anything we want to different, they set out to change.  

6) We can always do better

My dad is an engineer for a company called Celgard. He makes the separators that go into lithium-ion batteries. For the past ten years he has worked on the same product. Is this dull, monotonous work? No. Rather it is driven by the fact that we can always improve, we can alway find a better solution. That is what the life of engineers is about. We could use more of that. 

7) While science causes a lot of problems, it is also our only solution. 

Scientists, engineers, and tech enthusiasts all know that science has given us a fair share of problems–nukes, pesticide wasted forests, smog, and so on. But they also know that every scientific discovery has come with its benefits for mankind.  My impression is that most geeks recognize this dual nature of science and technology, however, they do tend to focus on the positive because, after all, that is what they do. 

8) The future is going to be extreme.

I honestly think that most people don’t realize just how extreme the future is going to be.  With the current rate of technological expansion we’re already set for extreme social changes, even if technology were to somehow stop dead in its tracks right now. Culture always lags behind technology and the amount of technological change we’ve seen in the last two or three decades has been immense. And it doesn’t look like it’s slowing down.  This generates a huge aura of excitement among all of geeks as they look to the future for all kinds of things that may seem extreme. I’m talking defeating aging, aboliting scarcity, and turning humans into psuedo-gods. While this may appear like blatant radicalism to outsiders, it is a core feature of our world that we can’t even imagine what the world will be like in a 100 years. There isn’t much more fun than imagining and trying to make those dreams a reality. 

photo courtesy of pillowhead designs