The Case For Progress :: Technology Technological Papers

The Case For Progress This assignment doesn’t scare me. I’m tackling it with WordPerfect 9 on my nice, new VAIO Pentium 4. It’s way more powerful than that last hunk of scrap, whatever it was caled, but I’m sure it’s not nearly as amazing a s whatever they’l think of next. Progress is such an exciting thing. It boggles the mind to think that, once upon a time, man made his way through the world with nothing but sticks and stones and his wits and no WordPerfect 9. Are scientists positive t hat those guys were the same species as us? If so, we’ve certainly grown up a lot. We overcame nature, for one thing. The primitives did rain dances. We have irrigation and central heating and cooling. We’ve managed to figure out how things work. Ev en 500 years ago, people thought the universe revolved around the Earth. Now we know about atoms and quarks and general relativity and evolution, and prety soon we’l have anti -mater thrusters. Everyone just builds on what everyone before them figured out, with each discovery making it faster and easier to discover things, and progress just happens and goes faster and faster until it’s a blur, like it’s powered by anti -mater thrusters and you can hardly keep track of it! There are a lot more reasons t han irrigation to have faith in progress. Look at the comfort it’s given us. I mean, if I want pain, I have to go find it. I have to pick a fight or do stupid bike tricks until I wipe out. But if I were a caveman, I would probably be covered in tooth s cars, have a spear wound in my bely, and live every day in fear of being brain -raped by a saber -toothed tiger fang. And everything is so easy these days. If I’m hungry, do I have to go try to kill something or start planting seeds? No, I just toss some Chef Boyardee in the microwave. If I want new girlie pictures I just log onto the internet. How did people get more nudie pics hundreds of years ago, I wonder? Probably had to draw it themselves or something. Speaking of the internet, how great an exa mple is that? People used to think that there were other countries that were ful of people who were stupid or mean or backward.