“Technology” is any organized way of accomplishing something. Making coffee has a technology. Fixing a broken leg has a technology. Freeing a being has a technology.
Humans on earth have specialized in the adventure of trying to control MEST (Matter, Energy, Space and Time – the physical creations of the non-physical spirit world).
And I am no exception.
I offer the photograph above as an illustration of this adventure. And if it looks more like a nightmare, that’s how I titled this photo!
Finding a correct Why
When there are errors in applying a technology, repair is required to obtain the desired result. You can’t repair something until you locate the reason why it isn’t working as you expected.
For example, the display was quite dim when the input signal wasn’t stable. Though this is expected, I wanted to make it as bright as possible to reduce this problem. I thought that the device I was using to power the display wasn’t capable of delivering enough juice to make it brighter, so I spent a lot of time modifying the thing to boost the display driver current. Though this was probably a good idea, it did not result in a brighter display.
Then I remembered that the display current is limited by a component connected to another device. I looked up the datasheet for that device, and calculated what the value of that component should be. Sure enough, the value in my circuit was way off. Fixing this did brighten the display somewhat. I could probably get it brighter, but I don’t want to push it too far. These components all have maximum ratings that can’t be exceeded without risk of device failure.
With the brighter display, I was able to notice that there was high frequency noise at the input. I didn’t try to fix this. It is probably due to poor “shielding,” but until I try to fix it, I won’t know for sure.
Remaining unresolved situations
A “situation” as the greatest departure from the ideal scene.
Departures from my ideal scenes bother me. Do they bother you, too? Probably so.
If you’re like me, you spend rather large amounts of time trying to handle situations, or at least discover handlings for situations.
Real handlings are based on correct whys. Fake handlings are based on wrong whys. We have a lot of fake handlings going down on earth today. Because we have a lot of wrong whys.
I sometimes wish the public were more impatient! Maybe more outcry would result in more correct whys found. However, by observation and experience, outcry more often results in more wrong whys dreamed up. This would tend to indicate out-ethics among those responsible for coming up with good handlings for all the various situations. I suppose all this apparent ineffectiveness could be due to stupidity and ignorance. But when you think about it, those are basically forms of out-ethics, too.
In my personal world I try to invent games that I can sometimes win at. But in the world at large, I don’t have this choose-all-your-own-games option. At least, not yet. I must find a way to sell something I can produce for money that I can use to obtain enough goodwill in society to stay alive. And even then, it’s an iffy proposition.
I have this electronic art idea. But I don’t have many products from this idea that I consider salable. I have my skills and interest in ordinary electronics. But the market for these seems limited. Odd, as we are an almost totally electronic society. But production of our devices has become extremely automated. And what must be done by hand is accomplished by low-paid factory workers in the “developing world” (read: former colonies, or wish they were).
The price of optimism
Who in this society has the idea that we could possibly make it through these times freer and more prosperous than ever before? There are, actually, quite a few such people. And they are almost universally derided from the peanut gallery of braying asses, composed mostly of people who are simply too out-ethics to be optimistic.
Other than that, I don’t find that optimism has many liabilities. If you have to die and get reborn for hundreds of times, why not be optimistic about it? I mean: there’s always the chance you could find a correct why and make some real progress towards handling one of our many beefy planetary situations.
So I must tip my hat to the other optimists out there.
There are a lot of sincere voices out there that are not optimistic. And that, itself, is a situation! It suggests that a lot of these very able beings have been unduly influenced by the suppression they are trying to understand and outwit. Well: At least they haven’t totally given up yet.
All you need is a few correct whys to cheer you up.