Midori-san, the blogging houseplant
Proposition: Nay Myo, Cheng Sin, Rohan Gupta
Opposition: Wei Ren, Bernard, Melvin
Rethink.Women Leaders
16 years ago
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This house believes that ve should not vaste resources on useless technology. Ve are against spending money, resources and man power on things that cannot benefit mankind in anyway, in other words, useless. In the very first place, technology's purpose is to improve the lives of mankind.
ReplyDeleteCurrently ve human kind has not reached a state of advancement and prosperity to be spending our much needed resources on technology that cannot benefit human kind in anyway. There is still too many uncharted waters in the scientific field for us to cover and there are still many people around the world who do not even have enough money to feed themselves and their loved ones. Therefore, ve believe that in steadof spending resources on useless technologies and in stead, these resources can be put to better use in more useful technologies and in humanitarian aid for the less fortunate.
We would like to contest the proposition's claim that there is 'useless technology'. This is because everybody has different needs, depending on the environment they live in, and needs can vary with time. As such, we are of the opinion that all technology has a use, except that the target group would differ. We would appreciate it if the proposition could provide us their definition of 'useless technology'
ReplyDeletewhat is useless to someone may not be useless to another person. we cannot use the opinion of one person to reflect the general opinion.
ReplyDelete'technology' is defined the result of money spent into researching new products or appliances that improve the lives of humans so that we can do things faster or more easily. Also technology may benefit us in other ways by aiding us to do things. Useless technology is the appliances or i may put it, 'technology' that do not help us in a way that makes the money put into the research worth it.
ReplyDeleteAn example will be Midori-san, the blogging houseplant. The plant basically tells us what the weather is and the temperature and humidity. These can be easily measured by technology already available to us. And thus, the money is not well spent, and the plant is considered as useless technology as it does not make our lives easier.
Now you may not have understood our point. What may appear useless to one may not necessarily be to another. This technology, Midori-San, helps botanist understand what the plant feels and think. And by having the plany "blog" it's thoughts and feelings we are able to know what the plant wants. We all know that plants require light, water, minerals, soil etc. But do we actually know what is necessary for them to grow. Midori-San may appear to be useless to you but are you sure that it would be useless forever? So we feel that Midori-San is not a useless technology and hence your example is invalid.
ReplyDeleteTo clarify the definition. There will always be a majority opinion. This opinion will be biased as the word 'opinion' suggests. However, it allows us to judge what is useful and useless because technology is not meant for one person but for the benefit of mankind or its targetted audience. And it has to benefit a substantial amount of people. (e.g. wheelchairs benefit the handicap people in the world and bloggin plants do not impact a substantial amount of people, benifiting them is a far thought. ):(
ReplyDeleteWe are saying that yes, there is a public opinion based on many single opinions. These opinions are gathered to give a verdict.
I believe Cheng Sin has already explained why we feel that the Midori-San example is relevant while you have failed to come up with a substantiated argument with support and you have instead, deemed the example as invalid without any evidence.
Also, you have not come up with a point.:(
Instead of wasting our resources on such useless technology we should try to come with tachnology that will actually impact us. Come on, how will knowing what the plant is thinking solve the more important problem of world hunger or global warming. Instead the scientist should divert their minds towards solving issues that are real and relevant to us. Useless technologies like these are a distraction that we have to put aside if we want to solve problems that have to be solved.
We look forward to seeing your first argument :)
There are many useless technologies around in the world, even now you are posting
ReplyDeletewith a useless technology that is deemed useless by many. Blogging is a form of useless technology that it is just use to convey your personal feelings for the day when you can just write out in paper.
Many technologies have been deemed useless like Lego NXT and RCX and many more.
All these "useless" technology have been deemed as useless as it is not commonly used by many people.
From Bernard's points, the defining of useless depends very closely to the needs of people.
In fact, all this "useless" technologies are actually a form of boasting the country's prowess in that field of technology, just like the nuclear bomb from America.
Midori-San shows the technological advances of Japan,making technology that allows people to
understand the feelings of plant. When Cheng Sin said that "'Technology' that do not help us in a way that makes the money put into the research worth it", your Point of view maybe biased as in fact, people buy the plants to make themself feel happy by understanding the plant's feeling and maybe learning how to take care of plants.
When Cheng Sin stated that "it does not make our lives easier.", it may not be held true as technologies EXIST to make peoples life easier.
In the case of device that wakes you up when you are driving at night, it may be deemed useless to many as it might not work well but they exist to help those that tend to fall asleep when they are driving halfway, especially when they are feeling sleepy.
(link http://www.critical-art.net/tactical_media/useless/Page_7.html)
Even in the field of Cloning, America have been putting aside a lot of money of R&D in this field, it was eventually stopped due to strong opposition from the public on the grounds of immorality.
The research may not be completed and was deemed useless but it aided people in this field to understand the usage of embryonic stem cells to "clone organs",
like there was research that managed to "make a pig's heart to beat, as the researches added embryonic stems cells and made it beat.
Useful technology does not necessarily have to help benefit everybody, but it helped people understand the field of that technology.
From our point of view, there are no useless technology but only technologies are not commonly used by many people, which in this debate, is deemed as useless.
We have already defined useless technology as technology that does not benefit the majority. Also it does not compare up to the amount of money spent. You have given us many examples of useful technologies, but we would like to point out that there are useless technology out there. You may find it rare, this is because useless technology defeats its own purpose and thus, not many people will develop it.
ReplyDeleteI quote "Useful technology does not necessarily have to help benefit everybody, but it helps people understand the field of that technology". Your argument refers to useful technology but not useless technology.
We have stated our view as technologies such as Midori-san is useless. Would you spend millions of dollars researching in a plant that would merely tell us humidity, temperature and weather. Those are easily observable and serves nearly no purpose. We have proven the existence of a useless technology but you have failed to rebut it.
You also said that in this debate, what we deem as 'useless' are technologies not commonly used by many people. They are not commonly used because they do not benefit us and people are not interested in using them. In that way, you have also agreed to our definition that less-commonly used technologies are useless and thus, contradicted with yourself.
tyvm =)
Ah, I just thought of many possible examples of useless technology. Posting for fun only.
ReplyDeleteBasically, I'd say stuff that have two or more uses that either completely contradict each other or are similar to each other are quite useless. Like er, an AC unit that you can use as a hand-fan, or an invisible television. Hope you get what I mean.