The Judgement of Everything

What isn't part of the big gray area of life?

Everything has a cost, as it has a benefit. This is a common rule of life. With good, there must be evil; with yin, there must be yang, and some of each within the other. However, Neil Postman takes this notion a step further with his analysis of an old tale involving the great king Thamus of upper Egypt, and his take on writing, in his essay The Judgement of Thamus. 

If we are to take a moment to reflect on the objects and changes around us, we are sure to find similarities to postman's analysis of the computer, and how this change in technology has shaped our current experiences and ideologies. 

If we are to judge something up and coming, not even fully formed and functional, but sure to be on the rise in the future, let's say, self-driving cars, then there are certainly many benefits and detriments that can be wrought from the concepts and test-drives that have already occurred. On one hand, we would be able to nearly abolish normalized parking space. We may be able to create a better system of public transportation. We may be able to share costs on the purchasing of vehicles. On the detriments side, as always, there is the fear of becoming too complacent. The fear that if something were to happen, would the people inside be able to take control? One of the biggest problems with self-driving cars is the moral dilemma. If a person is in the way, does a car's AI prioritize the person in front of them, or the person in the car? Can a car prioritize a child's life over that of an adult? 

As with each step in technology we take, we are forced to make new decisions and think about the world in ways that it had never been thought of before. We can neither predict the way that any new technology will shape our future completely nor ensure that any new technology will the used to harm others.

(img_src: http://www.kiveand.com/car/car-power-diagram)