As We May Think -- But Can We Think?

To what point have we grown to find ourselves merely looking back to the ideas of a man spoken not even a hundred years ago, and only to find that everything he has dreamed of has somehow made its way from the logical pictures of his mind to the a tangible reality. Vennevear Bush spoke of not just of the ideal camera which could instantly render a picture for its taker but seconds after the fact, but also he envision a form of the personal computer that is more or less was meant to be a personal library. There was no computing involved really, just the mere implementation of code which would allow the user to scan through the thousands of texts that would undoubtedly be stores within a system consistent of microfilm.

It was indeed a form of what we could consider the computer today, for that is a library of information we often tap at the mere stokes of a few keys of a mechanized board. We interact with a machine daily, work from it, live from it, feed off it – he could not have possibly seen such an existent coming to light. Having exceeding the very bounds of even his imagination, we’ve taken the idea and built it into a complex network of peoples and places that is constantly wired as one. Some of us are utterly dependant upon the connection, as others are so ignorant of its use that they avoid it all together.

Our daily lives are often drowned now with the indulgence of possibly too much information, where there is quite literally the ability to find anything and everything you could ever want or desire. A child could just as easily flick a few keys and watch a real recording of men so firm in their beliefs that they would hold down another man and steadily slice away at his throat with a knife until his head is severed from the body to rest in a dark pool of useless life blood. Both gift and curse, the power we have is often underestimated and wasted. For when we sit and let our eyes become lost in a screen, we neglect to realize that it is but a looking glass into the venomous pit of the human existence.

The true trial is not to stay on the edge of technology; it is up to us to now learn the balance. To learn the means in which we can not let ourselves become consumed by the very things dreamt up by logical man of his age. The threshold of tomorrow has been passed, and today we must strive to shape the future -- not allow it to shape us.