Science vs Immediacy

This is just a few of mine thoughts about the technology crises that we are entering right now, despite the incredibly advanced the humanity has done so far.

Carl Sagan prophectly describes in his book our descent to obscutiry and dark times when letting go of real science.

In his book The Demon-Haunted World, he says: "science is more than a body of knowledge; it is a way of thinking. I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time - when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness. The dumbing down of America is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30-second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance."

Just to be clear I am not advocating for politics in USA, but its natural, Carl Sagan is talking about his own country. But if we replace United States, for any country, let say Brasil, the content and profundity of his words does not change at all.

Its a fact that we are living in a service and reduced industrialization right now, and the pace of IT services is growing very rapidly, not giving any time for real science to happen. This sense of urgency and immediacy is crumbling other aspects that in short time might hinder the IT development. Most of VC are now focusing on investing only on IT related business, and are forgetting to see the big picture, the picture that is the base for all. 

In his words, he describes that we get dumber by the time, because of short sounds bites from 30 seconds to 10 seconds, that sounds very familiar. Another downside of the short contents, is the anxiety that it causes and to be honest does not enrich our lives, even a single bit. In fact this short videos just give you a bias vision of live and normally throw you to the wrong direction. Another information that arrises from those short time influential media, is the concept of true, that these type of applications are helping / contributing in its vanishment.

I believe we should reflect more on how IT is helping us in fact, and how we are missing out or even drifting away from real science. Science that really enlighten and brings light to our lives. Perhaps we should, stop and think, and not just follow the flow as it is. In fact the actual flow is drying out funding for other much more pressing issues, such as environment, medicine and other open problem that a computer cannot solve by itself. I strongly believe that we can evolve better by converging technologies instead of just betting in one type. The convergency is beneficial and bring the best of us, giving space for more democratic discussing and engaging instead of a technocracy rule by just a few advertisement machines.

Thank you for reading it!

Cordially,

Leandro Berti

CEO FIBER INOVA

Nanotechnology enthusiast.