Modern Technology

[Edwin]

Can you imagine life without the technology we have now. Many people on remote Philippine Islands no doubt can because many of them live without that technology. We lived in a place for 10 years where there were no telephones, only one provided by the National Park Service, and you had to stand in line and wait your turn to use that telephone. There were no cell phones as there is no cell phone reception in those mountains. For the first several years there were not computer internet connections possible until 2 way Satellite reception came in, and then almost everyone there with a few exceptions got the internet connection including us. I change life for people there as after that they ordered their groceries, did all kinds of shopping, and communicated with loved ones out of the valley using the internet. Now where we are our kids have a land line telephone, and we all carry these cell phones around constantly including us.

[jadegil6]

In 2008 I traveled to the interior, mountainous area of Negros Oriental to visit an online friend's family who lived there. She was living in Cebu City at that time, but her family lived as they had always lived, in the mountains, and isolated from modern technology.
The oldest child in the household was 20 years old, and there were 7 other siblings and the parents living there in a nipa hut style house. Another older sibling had moved to the big city of Cebu a few years earlier, which meant that the parents had 10 children in total.
The 8 remaining children had lived in this house for their entire lives. There was no electricity, and no running water. The children who were old enough to go to school did travel to a school, but only if their parents had enough money to pay the school fees, which was not often the case. There at the school they had witnessed the existence of electricity, but they had never had the luxury of having it in their home life.
I took a charged laptop with me to their home. Their were numerous children there from the surrounding farmer's families. I showed them a cartoon video (Ice Age) on the laptop. None of these kids had ever seen a computer before, and none had ever seen a movie before. They were so excited and amazed that things like that existed. There were numerous adults who came there to meet their first foreigner (me), and most had never seen a white man before.
Although they were extremely poor, they were very content and happy with their lives without modern technology.

[jadegil6]

BBC World News recently featured a simple initiative in the Philippines that brings a bit of brightness into the lives of the country’s poorest people.

The project is called “Liter of Light”, and the technology involved is just a plastic bottle filled with water.

It’s an environmentally-friendly alternative to an electric light bulb, and it’s virtually free.

Watch the report filed by the BBC’s Kate McGeown from Manila by copying and pasting the URL below into your browser.
It has a brief commercial at the beginning of the video.


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-14967535

[Edwin]

Thank you very much, Sir Michael, for sharing that news story. Who would think that with a bottle of water suspended though the roof into the room the equivalent of a 50 watt light bulb could produce light for a room, allowing people to have light in their house in the day time when they can't afford the electricity, or don't have the electricity to light a room. That way they can have light in rooms in their houses without having windows or the necessity of electric light bulbs. Very interesting!

[crisipicada]

Mathematics may not teach us to breathe oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide, or to love a friend and forgive an enemy. But it gives us every reason to hope that every problem has a solution.

[Edwin]

Mathematics may not teach us to breathe oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide, or to love a friend and forgive an enemy. But it gives us every reason to hope that every problem has a solution.

Yes, Crisi, and solutions to problems really helps us too!

[abufarsi]

What is often overlooked or underestimated is the impact of new tools/inventions on rural or tribal cultures. I personally do not agree that a primitive culture where people are happy with their lot in life, is somehow superior or worth saving unless those in that culture have a viable choice otherwise. But seeing the life of others, either through movies or personal contact, that is so far richer in THINGS, leads to discontent. Yet, who measures his happiness by his bank account? Clearly Filipino culture benefits Filipinos. Is my, richer in things, culture superior? Better for the world's people? I would have to say that I would base my opinion on the access to the widest choices, who could attain personal goals the most efficiently, no matter the situation of birth. Did those people shown a movie in a foreign language have ...choice?

I lament the loss of truly foreign cultures, world wide. I would love to visit a place and find better choices made by those there, leading to a new thinking by me. A choice I did not know was available.

I doubt that a person who strives to be the leader of his clan would want those around him to lose the idea that their clan was a valuable entity, or that his clan was backward.

Did you do them a favor showing them a movie on a laptop? Did those farmers living without electricity have a viable choice to select the life they see you lead? Was there a kind of happiness in their existing life that you could not see, and thus undermined by your display of toys? Did your movie inspire them to make a choice they had access to? or did they realize further that their choices were severely limited? can those children really leave that farm to a better life?

[Edwin]

Have you ever changed some settings on your electronic equipment, and then you were not able to get them back? I changed some settings on the scanning software to make a picture of a dog that we had years ago scan better, and then I just thought those settings would go back to the default, but they didn't. The next time I went to scan something for Carol, it was scanning way too heavy, and as a result it was taking too much ink to print the writing material I had scanned. After a lot of experimenting and comparing something that I had scanned before I changed the settings, I think I have it back close to where it was. It would have been so easy to have written the settings down before I changed them, but I didn't think of that then!

[chaychay644]

We can't deny the fact that we all enjoy the benefits of modern technology..it makes our work more easier and makes us more comfortable..Through modern technology our life span had increased because of medicines that has been develop to cure different kinds of illnesses..But, don't forget that through modern technology a lot of processed foods has been developed that contains chemicals that are not good too to our body..and should only be taken in moderation..just like for example the original color of sugar is brown..but because of modern food processing white sugars are also available in the market..have you thought of comparing them?..for sure most of us haven't thought about that..just to think of the procedures/process and the chemicals that has been added in order for it to be refined and make it turn into very white and its all because of chemicals..no wonder my Nutrition instructor advised us that if you have a choice between a brown and white sugar..you have to chose the brown sugar and I clearly understand why..we also consume lots of harmful chemicals in our daily diet..

it means that while we enjoy ourselves on the benefits of modern technology we also have to be cautious on the bad effects that it can cause us..

[Edwin]

You are correct, ChayChay, about the processing of foods. My Dad was deathly against eating white bread. He didn't think about the harmful effects of cakes made with the same flour, and we ate a lot of them when I was a little boy. He used to say that you take white bread and throw it to pigs and they wouldn't even eat it. Well, I think they would eat it, but he was trying to make a point. He used to say about Wonder Bread, which was a brand of white bread, that you would eat it, and then you would wonder how you managed to eat it, or why you ate it. When I was a little boy Mom and Dad would buy raw sugar in large, 40 or 50 pound bags for us to use. We put it on everything, and did not use any white sugar except for a little bit of baking, and then they should have been using to raw sugar. We ground a lot of our own flour from the wheat cernal, and used the whole grain flour in most everything except for cakes, and we would have been better off if the whole grain flour would have been used in the cakes as well.

You are correct about the chemical in food to preserve them. One of my supervisors on a job I was on years ago said that some of that stuff caused diabetes. Whether that was true or not, that is what he thought. Another contractor left large stick of salomi sp?, and my supervisor said that he would not eat it because of the preservatives. My brother and sister-in-law drink goat's milk because they have goats, and they have become accustomed to drinking it, but they say that the dairy processing plants add formaldihyde to the milk and they will not drink it. Well, I love milk, and for many years we did not have access to whole milk from the cow, so I drank lots of it. I drank only milk right from the cow until I was about 28 years old, and then I drank the processed milk until I was 63 years old, and since that time I have only drank milk right from the cow again. Pesticides, herbicides, and preservatives are modern curses for our nutrition, and people wonder why they have diabetes, cancer, strokes, heart trouble, and other diseases that I am not even thinking about. Mix that with drugs and alcohol, and you have a deadly mix. Then I think about the way they promoted tobacco use for years when I was a young person. Then they got people hooked on tabacco use, and add that to the mix, and you have real health problems. Some people are beginning to gain an understanding, and that is good.