Technology comes in phases, in every phase, the objective remain the same. The primary purpose of technological advancement is to make living a lot easier. Communicating with our loved ones that were out of reach used to be a problem, we created devices to help eradicate the issue. Traveling on feet and animals could barely serve as a means of transportation, we built cars, bikes, planes, trains to make transportation more comfortable.
Technology has always served as a solution to our immediate problems. Is the evolution of technology making us less creative? when I saw this question, I laughed. You know the funny thing about we humans is that, we are not used to not having problems and the moment something threatens our need for chaos, we start pointing fingers. Being at ease is not the natural nature of we humans, we get bored of it.
This present era is definitely considered technological era but we shouldn't be mistaken about one fact; the evolution should not be about technology alone. We humans are species that needs to evolve to survive. At every point in human evolution, it is a race of survival but the moment we realized technology could substitute we humans in many areas, we became less focused on our own evolution. We started looking for ways to make technology more effective, instead of building our mind or finding ways to enhance ourselves.
To an extent, technology is expected to enhance human productivity. So it is safe to say, technology still serve we humans as far as technology is concerned. Here is the issue, what if tomorrow, all technology stops working, what can we humans do without technology? Every knowledge have been stored on computers, we trust these devices to do the reading and information analysis for us, without the need to train ourselves to do it.
Slowly, we humans that grow in chaos, we are finally getting comfortable with being at ease; enjoying the beauty of technology. What effect does this have on our creativity? Well, I wouldn't say we are less creative, after all, we are the one building these devices. It is a case of creative misdirection, it is okay to be creative with technology and build beautiful tools but we shouldn't neglect ourselves in the process.
Technology is slowly becoming an extension of mankind but it is not. It is a tool built to serve a purpose, it is not a part of us. With AI, most people have lost the ability to think for themselves. People can no longer formulate letters, memo; Ai does the job. AI has become relationship counselors for some couples, it thinks for them and analyze their lives and dictate next steps. Thinking used to be what we are good at, this is what made us Superior species. It is okay to consult AI, in order to gain better understanding but it final result shouldn't be our final conclusion.
Most of us forget, even AI get it wrong most times and yet, that is your own adviser. You don't give time to consider the possibility of the result being wrong, AI has become "All knowing" for some people. Our capacity of creative thinking as a human is not being used on humans but used for technology, so that they can do the thinking for us.
How can we remedy this? We need to remember which evolution brought us this far, it wasn't technological evolution but human evolution. The fact that technology keeps evolving, does not mean we have to stop.
This write-up was inspired by weekly featured content titled The cost of ease in hive learners community.
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