Study: middle-aged people unimpressed with modern technology
By Joshua Topolsky 
posted Dec 31st 2009 5:32PM
posted Dec 31st 2009 5:32PM
posted Dec 31st 2009 5:32PM
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Hehehe, aint that cute... i love old people.
@ImDaIllest
Get off my lawn!
@ImDaIllest I had someone pay me to move their computer (and all its associated components & peripherals) from one room to another.
@BluechipJ speaking of getting old- I'm pissed so little is being done to prevent aging and/or give us cuber-minds or what no. C'mon- the newest Ipod ain't gonna be much use when you're all dead n stuff
@BluechipJ
You mean you helped someone with the entire setup or moved heavy stuff in for them because those are two different things. how much they pay you?
@yuriythebest
havent you heard of the fountain of youth?!
@ImDaIllest
I've been (almost) paid $60 to just disable someone's firewall. The reason I say almost is because I declined it (friend of a friend), but still, its amazing what they will pay for instead of figuring it out themselves... Then again, how else do you think the Video Professor got rich? (besides the fact that its a scam)
35 - 40 isn't old!
@ImDaIllest
Emperor Who?
@JP23
I laughed out loud at this! Thanks for making my day =]
@ImDaIllest Gotta Love them old folks...we're gonna all get there one day!
I miss the Jetsons.
@RohitKapur Futurama!
@bullshitexpresscom
Yea Futruma is a pretty funny show
@bullshitexpresscom
FYI, new season is coming in 2010. I'm pumped.
my dad and mom are just plain scared of modern technology :'(
@welshys
Mine aren't :| which is a shocker. I asked my mom and she told me that everything around is just evolutionary and that they just improve but that there's almost nothing completely. And I was surprised, because I agree completely.
I'm 27 and I think that today's technology is pathetic. We're still fighting cancer? Come on. Our way of life (read: governments and religions) stifle progress at every turn. Get real. Our tech is sad compared to where it should be. VERY sad.
That's my opinion at least. I'm sure there are plenty who would see otherwise...
Being an engineer, comments like this always piss me off.
@Parias
Where "should" technology be? With the exception of biotechnology (stem cells, cloning, etc.), I don't see governments & religion interfering with other scientific progress -- unless you think the Vatican is supporting Big Oil & the U.S. government supports cancer as a form of population control.
As for cancer, talk to any biologist and they'll tell you that we don't even (completely) understand it, what causes it, or how it functions.
Please, tell me where you "expect" us to be.
@BluechipJ
Yes, Mr. Engineer, I believe that the Vatican is supporting Big Oil & the U.S. government supports cancer as a form of population control.
@Parias You definitely aren't the most intelligent soul out there, are you?
Compared to a couple years ago, cancer isn't a death sentence. It's treatable now; almost every form is.
I'm with the engineer on this; where exactly should we be? Should the Enterprise be with us?How about Spock?
@Jonathan K
Wow, you guys are really defensive. Happy New Year. Make a resolution to keep that blood pressure down.
And you're both right. Humanity has been allocating every reasonable resource to medical and technological advancement. Politics and religion never play a part in preventing the advancement of either, and we're as advanced as humanity could possibly be right now.
You both read that paragraph and agree with it? I guess we'll have to agree to disagree, then.
@Jonathan K
Oh, and...
"It's treatable now; almost every form is."
:-|
I'm not the most intelligent soul?
@BluechipJ Heehee, We don't understand gravity or why Tylenol works, but I like both and still want a hoverboard and instant headache relief.
@bullshitexpresscom
We're still fighting cancer?
Cancer is usually a natural result of cell decay usually apparent over the span of decades. We are still fighting cancer because ever increasing life expectancy makes this specific cell aging effect more prominent. It would be almost as absurd to claim that we should have cured death from old age by now. Bodies will eventually wear out until you replace each cell/tissue/organ with brand new stem-cell-based or mechanical versions. Taken to the extreme, you would eventually have to replace your own brain. Whether you would still be alive or just a clone of you would be alive is subject to debate.
@Parias
While I don't agree with the entire post, I do agree with the religion and government limiting technology. How? Well the government still hasn't refined the patent & copyright laws, which limits innovation. I understand that if you spent time and money for R&D that you should have exclusive rights to it __for a while__, but its being abused by companies. That, and some companies don't care about improving and are only interested in milking every dime they can... but thats a different issue.
@BluechipJ
I don't see governments & religion interfering with other scientific progress -- unless you think the Vatican is supporting Big Oil & the U.S. government supports cancer as a form of population control.
Sorry, but you are 100% wrong to think that governments and religion not interfere with scientific progress. Why our last president directly interfered with this in multiple ways..
One only needs to follow the money. If the drug companies could make money by curing the problem and not only the symptons do you think they would? Absolutely F'ing NOT. The only reason the Drug companies have so much power is because they control the money. Therefore, they control the government. Lookup lobbyists and see what they do for a living and who pays them to do it.
Also, with regards to religion I belive it is the single worst human characteristic there ever was or ever will be. 99.9999% of wars fought on this Earth stem from religion. We would be way farther advanced in every way if not for religion and the differences it brings to the table.
I wish it was different, but its not.
@Parias
Engadget commenters. What a life it must be to be totally oblivious to reality outside of the latest iPod.
@hungryhungryhippo "99.9999% of wars fought on this Earth stem from religion."
I guess you didn't learn a thing in history... World War II was the bloodiest war in all of history started by Hitler and he was an atheist. Stalin (Soviet Union) and Mao (Communist China) killed/murdered millions and both were atheist. Sorry but the 20th century was by far the bloodiest in human history and more people were killed than all of human history prior and primarily by atheists.
On the other hand that pesky thing called freedom came from a bunch of religious people... Sure wars have been fought over religion, but atheism has killed more than all combined by far.
Long and short of it... You're not only wrong, but an idiot.
@mrstu
Aside from being Hitler being at least nominally Catholic one has to wonder how many people would have been slaughtered in the name of faith had the means to commit large scale slaughter been available in, say, the middle ages?
I don't think you really want to think about that.
@mrstu WWII was the bloodiest war in history because the technology of war caught up with the motivation with which we wage it. In terms of innocents killed and barring the deployment of the H bomb, wars in the name of one god or another were far worse on a per capita basis.
@Parias Hitler was excommunicated from the Catholic Church and only spoke of Christianity until he was elected then he stopped (it is called playing to the population). Stalin and Mao were both atheists, by their own words and their countries were officially atheistic. Both suppressed religion (all forms) as much as they could.
It's called a history book, pick it up...
Specious nonsense.
Freedom has always come from people rebelling from whatever the current religious authority is. If not for such rebellion, Europe would still look like a sort of caricature of the Taliban.
When Europeans were finally free to read the Bible in their own language they were able to read for themselves what was in it and realize that there were some contrary ideas in there. People had to rebel against religious authority before even that could happen.
The relevant Protestant denominations crow about this rather loudly.
@hungryhungryhippo
The one thing that people fail to realize is that it is not religion that causes war but merely ignorance that causes war. If it wasn't for religion I'm sure people would be waging war for different reasons, be it for country or family or stepping on someone's toes or w/e.
You can see it even in little children, our tendency for violence or revenge or retaliation, it's not religion that causes this, it's the way we are.
Lets thank religion for the nuclear bomb, let's thank religion for advancements in weapon technology. The moment we stop blaming something else AND TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR OUR ACTIONS is a step towards not being ignorant.
We talk about our knowledge that separates us from the other animals/mammals, yet we are too ignorant to realize that we are still mammals regardless of our knowledge(we still kill to eat, we still kill each other, etc)
Then, after we realize how ignorant we are we can begin to look at the fact that 99.999999% of wars (nice mad up statistics) are caused by ignorant human beings and nothing else.
We call our technology "progress" yet the only thing we progress towards is the degradation of the planet and now we're focusing on being "green", lmfao give me a break.
I don't care what religion or belief someone states because actions speak louder than anything else.
Mankind...destined for failure :)
/end rant >=) (waits for the shitstorm)
@jedi Baseless assertions.
Pre-reformation Europe was rife with 'dissension' in the form of Christian heresies, paganism, atheism, etc etc; 'rebellion against authority' is a natural human tendency, and not some late-middle-age invention.
@AWelsh
Hitler was more a follow of Neitzsche (an atheist philosopher) than Christianity. It really is not clear if he worshipped/believed in himself as the savior of mankind (the over-man/super-man), the state, or god. Obviously you can't take what a politician as mischevious as Hitler says at face value.
Anyways, tribalism/nationalism as a philosophy is by far more responsible for conflict than religion. Religious conflict is usually just a subset of that category. Also, given that religious and nationalist boundaries were often overlapping, one can not properly attribute conflict to one or the other. Were the "Troubles" in UK between Protestants and Catholics or between Unionists and Irish Nationalists? The ambiguity lends itself well for personal bias to come up in discussion.
@Parias wow this whole convo is bullshit. WOW?
May I also add that the war making ability almost universally has been the property of the state and not of religious institutions. How one can lay blame on religion for most conflict then is quite a stretch. The state would have to be a puppet of religion for this to be the case. Any description of say, Europe in the middle ages, has the state and religious authority in more of a balance of power with the state often showing the stronger hand and the prime mover of events. In many cases, religion was just the puppet of the state, to be used to reinforce policies when synergy exists and ignored otherwise. One example may be the crusades, where there was a synergy between the states desire for conquest and the religious value of the "holy lands."
@mrstu
And even were that so it still doesn't excuse the attrocities comiited in the name of faith. There's nothing wrong with religion or atheism, it's when they're used as tools by power hungry madmen that things go sadly wrong.
@mrstu
Stalin was an orthodox.
It's called propaganda books what you read, throw them away :P.
@enfek
Stalin was not orthodox even though he went to some religious schools in early life. I suppose that would make Obama a Muslim because he went to school in Indonesia? Surely, given that religion was the "opiate of the masses" and detrimental to a communal society, he was not a religious person. There is plenty of examples of anti-Russian Orthodox persecution and activity and pro-atheist activity under Stalin's leadership.
@mrstu IF religions were today the political power that they had in the past, there will be no engadget.com for you to come and comment, because they hated technology, inventions and killed those who dare to prove that the church was wrong
@mrstu NO MORE RELIGIONS!!!
@mrstu: Stalin was Russian orthodox and Hitler was catholic.
...and that, kids, is what Godwin's Law is all about.
Just to add something constructive, while certain cancers are actually improving in survival rates it is purely because of their type (less invasive) and their stage (catching them earlier with better monitoring). The idea that drug treatments are doing the most work in this trend is a huge modern myth.
If we don't have computer-assisted flying cars in 40 years, then something went wrong.
@AndrewS
The problem with flying cars is not technological but social and financial.
There's just not a lot of reason for it given that more advanced highways can be built for far less and get the same job done at a lower cost. That and I think it's pretty certain that no one wants 1000-100,000x the number of explosive, multi-ton aircraft flying over their houses hence the desire to place airports far away from civilization.
@COCOViper
umm most airports are located within civilization... lax, jfk, heathrow i could go on...
@COCOViper And the fact that most people can't even drive on the ground. God forbid they can fly.
@COCOViper
And this is exactly the attitude that will get us nowhere. Flying cars that coordinate with a network and can get you from point A to point B is the future, whether you like it or not. Perhaps some communities won't adopt them for certain reasons. It's true today where normal cars are non-existent in communities, even when you disregard economic status, communities simply chose other means of transportation.
@AndrewS Teleportation well negate the need for all forms of transportation.