Looking back....looking ahead
In the Clynes and Kline article and Clynes interview, I noticed that there was always a mention to the future progress that would be made in their field of study. Both scientists were optimistic that in the next few years, science would become thoroughly enthralled in the study of cyborgs and creating systems that could control man's body without him being conscious of the actions.
It is interesting how science seems to have an undenying optimism that progress will be made in a year, or many years down the line. It is clear that new scientific topics come to the forefront after groundbreaking results are brought to light and that these topics gain and lose popularity in the blink of an eye. I wonder if this optimism is a characteristic of human nature that has been brought to the scientific world. If it is, I believe that this optimism is one of the most necessary qualities for all those who work in scientific and or medical fields. Just think, if someone spends years searching for the cure of a disease and decides that too much time has passed and that the cure will never be found, how will any medical breakthroughs surface?
Although the study of cyborgs and space is not the same as searching for the cure of a disease, it is still incredibly important to those who study it. I am interested in finding out what progress has been made in the study of cyborgs--this afformenioned scientific optimism tells me that the topic has obviously not been completely left to the side; however, I have not heard of any current incredible ideas that have come out of Clynes and Kline's studies.
It is interesting how science seems to have an undenying optimism that progress will be made in a year, or many years down the line. It is clear that new scientific topics come to the forefront after groundbreaking results are brought to light and that these topics gain and lose popularity in the blink of an eye. I wonder if this optimism is a characteristic of human nature that has been brought to the scientific world. If it is, I believe that this optimism is one of the most necessary qualities for all those who work in scientific and or medical fields. Just think, if someone spends years searching for the cure of a disease and decides that too much time has passed and that the cure will never be found, how will any medical breakthroughs surface?
Although the study of cyborgs and space is not the same as searching for the cure of a disease, it is still incredibly important to those who study it. I am interested in finding out what progress has been made in the study of cyborgs--this afformenioned scientific optimism tells me that the topic has obviously not been completely left to the side; however, I have not heard of any current incredible ideas that have come out of Clynes and Kline's studies.
posted by maxine at 5:52 PM
1 Comments:
You bring up a really interesting point about scientists being optimistic about the future. In almost all popular culture references, including literature and movies, the future is always portrayed as being very scientifically advanced. Even in the movie we watched today, Metropolis, set in 2006, the future looked like the way we would imagine the world 50 years from now. Orwell’s 1984 written in 1949, portrayed life in 1984 to be controlled by an ever-watching government, where technology is described that doesn’t exist today. What is this obsession with assuming the future will be this great technological society.
Technology does constantly advance, but at a pace much slower that people predict. On a similar note, we always look back at the stupid mistakes we have made in science. For example, the Y2K scare was a big joke now that we know nothing happened. Can we even prove that science is advancing? What really makes us think that this is occurring?
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