Technology and Human Behavior - the Big Bang or Paris Hilton?

Long after the Big Bang, archaeologists estimate that fire was invented, probably as far back as 1.5 million years ago. Fire is considered one of the great discoveries of humans that contributed to the continuous technological developments that led us to where we are today. We still use fire in many aspects of modern society and it would be hard to get along without it. There are a lot of scientific discoveries or inventions that were discovered many years ago and are considered fundamental to society. Other examples are the wheel, mathematics, agricultural, medicine, concepts of time and measurement, astronomy, and many more technological advancements that have lead us to now.

Humans have invented and discovered so much tech know-how that we were able to land on the moon and walk around with our own life support systems. We developed the technology to communicate, without the use of fire, by propagating invisible signals through the air. Flying from one side of the planet and back is no biggie, Paris Hilton does it all the time. We have at our disposal powerful computer technology and replaced the slide-rule many years ago. During the infant stages of developing these inventions the technology was only available to a few. Scientists and large businesses used computers long before the common person could even comprehend what a computer was capable of doing.

Project all of this technological development to the here and now. Millions of years and thousands of lives that contributed to bringing us to this stage of technology. We can hold in our hands powerful portable devices that connect to what we call the Internet or World Wide Web. The power of this web of connections allows us to communicate, store and retrieve data, and is leading us to the ability to access almost infinite information from around the world.

Now that the masses hold in their hands this tremendous and wonderful achievement lets look at how it is put to use. If you look at the top 20 searches on the Internet you will find that almost half of the users are searching for pornography. Around a forth of them are searching for celebrities such as Paris Hilton, Jessica Simpson, and Carmen Electra. None of the top searches included the Big Bang or any another search on a scientific subject. Cell phones are used mostly to carry on useless conversations, Facebook games are a huge hit with the masses and using the tech for watching a Lady Gaga or an Eminem video is quite common.

I apologize to all the self-sacrificing scientists and inventors throughout the centuries. Maybe we need to go back to the primal fire and start over again.