Technology is a concept that is hard to avoid noticing in today's world. Everything around us is constantly evolving in shape, size, functionality and ease of use making our everyday lives more comfortable. For laymen "computers" do everything today. Although computers are just a tool comprising of different componenets, and these components are evolving.
Starting from lockable zippers, to quick-seal polythene bags, air-vented shoe soles, keyless entry cars, incredibly convenient yet complicated mobile phones, AI controlled vehicles, more and more powerful telecopes/microscopes/electron microscopes etc., to advanced modulation techniques, star searching algorithms, marvelously advanced semicondoctor applications, bullet train prototypes that break a multiple of the sound barrier, terribly advanced and accurate particle accelerators the list of things the "tech" is pumped into is seemingly endless and increasing in magnitude. The plan is to keep on complicating A.I. (artificial intelligence) so that it will simplify our lives.
Here, we're strictly talking about inventions relating to the physics of the human body and the physical world we live in (including matter, light). The human body is the most complex thing we humans know, because it is the only thing WE haven't created. More specifically, it is the brain. An automatic washing machine, with fuzzy logic for example is very advanced in terms of washing machines, but it uses the same logic that a human washer uses. Even if the machine is advanced, this human washer can also clean, cook and have a conversation!
So if you're catching the drift, the race ends when a human will be able to invent... ...a human?
The question that landed in my head is: When does this advancement come to halt?
A few references popped to my mind suggesting the logical reasoning of the way the trend of this advancing goes towards.
1 I was reading "Darwin's Black Box" a few years back, its a book by biochemist Michael Behe, suggesting an argument to theory that God or some supernatural entity created everything. He suggested that: in order for humans to evolve, more than one different systems would have to arise simultaneously. He claims that such systems already exist in biology and that the existence of "irreducible complexity" is what can disprove the fact that one allmighty designer constructed it.
In one section of that book, the mechanism of the hairs or cilia that are found on bodies of cells was discussed. Re-read the last sentence, and try to realize the mind-blowing complexity we are dealing with here, knowing the fact that a cell is the simplest biological entity that we may know. This mechanism is astoundingly similar to that of our modern geared motor arrangement (rotors, gear teeth, etc.).
So this modern technological mechanism, if you will, is similar to cilia structure.
2 Currently, I am learning computer programming in C language. I've done it before in C++ as well. In any programming you will find SEARCHING and SORTING algorithms. One such algorithm known as SEQUENTIAL SORT is used to take an array (or list) of certain values such as numbers, letters, etc and sort it in an ascending or descending manner (whichever way you pgorgam it to do so).
For example: {
8 3 6 9 2 1 3 7 5} is an array of numbers. This needs to be sorted in ascending order. In the algorithm, the design suggests to sequentially search for the lowest number starting from the first number and place it at the beginning, then search again for the lowest number starting from the 2nd number and place at that spot, then next lowest starting from the 3rd and so on untill all the lowest numbers after the current are pushed towards the left, finally arranging a sorted array. So here the number 1 would be pushed to leftmost spot first, then starting from number 3 it would find 2 to be the lowest, and put it in the spot where 3 is, and so on.
If you were to manually try to sort something, and i realised this after noticing a human's method (my own - i ws cheating, trying to perform a step by step run of the algorithm, but instead just sorting it myself), that the logic is similar. As the array is to be sorted ascendingly, you search for the lowest digit, place it aside, then search for the next lowest digit disregarding the first one and place that next to the first lowest, and so on.
Arguably as humans have designed computers, naturally human methodologies are applied. This brings me to my point that:
could realising the final, and ultimately minute anthropomorphic abilities and applying them be the end of advancement of innovation?
3) Ask yourself this question:
Is mathematics discovered or invented?Personally, I believe that mathematic is discovered. Since DAY ONE, 3 sticks + 2 sticks has always equaled to 5 sticks, whether you or I knew about it. There is not one single person who devised contraptions and drew blueprints just so that if you added 3 and 2 it would come to 5.
As we humans learned the ability within to be able to count and then numerically be able to firstly construct a number system, and use it to conduct certain operations. This may seem like a very rudimentary statement. So i'll elaborate. Successive differentiation of 7x^3 (seven into x-cubed) was always 21x^2 then 42x then 42 and finally zero. However, we humans were able to understand that after first realising the ability within us to be able to count and then numerically able to construct a number system, etc. Then ofcourse devise a way to put it down on paper.
However, addition and differentiation always existed, Calculus is just a way to put all that in language so that we may mutually understand it!!!
So trying to conlude everything: programming is based on human logic by the ability we have discovered, for example, use logic to sort. Although I am unaware of what came first: discovery of cilia or motors, the motor still matches the cilia mechanism, maybe coincidentally!
Finally, the great tool of mathematics, call it an invention if you want to, but it was understood only after we understood the mathematical ability within ourselves!
The day we are able to understand the final detail of how nature has created us (and I mean the final capstone of what creates us and how we coexist with the naturals around us), would that be the day when we can no longer innovate?
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