Sunday, 7 February 2016

Task: TED



Can technology solve our big problems?


Jason Pontin starts talking about Apolo to contextualise the importance of technology. They explains the resources used to arrive to the moon and then the motive why the government wanted to go to the moon. "The stronger emotion was of wonder at the transcendent power of technology". Landed on the moon was a result of great technological peak advances such as penicillin, the airplane... 


But nowadays technology gives us trivial toys like iPhone or iPad, but tech can't solve the great problems of humanity. Silicon Valley it has the clue of that: they have the created less ambitious companies and the role of venture capitalists to stop creating transformational ideas, but for incremental funding problems or false problems. They have always preferred small investments and they have put aside the investment for the development of technologies, which require a large capital. 

Another answer to that point is sometimes we choose not to solve big problems because of the failures of politics. Not to develop alternative energies or not to end the famine lies in political problems. Apolo has become a metaphor for the ability of technology to sort out our problems, but first we must try.

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