Leaps and Bounds)

Yesterday I mentioned the direct correlation between inter-cultural communication and the advancement of technology. The more people share their voices with one another, the more each is fertilized with the other’s ideas, and the more we advance as a whole. Also, as a culture expands in its technology, that has included enhancing their means of communication. Thus, one advancement leads more and more quickly to another, and so the pattern has been one of exponential growth.

In fact, every major advancement in communication leads to a spike in technological advancement. Here are the most notable examples:

1. Early writing systems from 3000-2000 BC, followed by large-scale agricultural systems and bureaucratic states.
2. The printing press from 1440, followed by the scientific and industrial revolution.
3. Telegraph system from 1830s-1840s, followed by trains, long-distance transit and transportation, factories and distribution.
4. Radio, telephone, and television from 1920s-1950s, followed by consumer appliances, personal automobiles, and rocket science.
5. The internet from 1969, followed by software and home computers, globalized manufacturing, and robotics.

The Road Ahead)

Our communication technology has progressed from talking to our neighbors, to meeting each other across great distances, to writing down words that could be carried elsewhere, to having instantaneous communication with millions across the globe. Today we appear be on the cusp of yet another advancement in communication and technology. With the advent of AI, for the first time ever we have the ability to receive messages from the aggregate sum of millions of voices all at once. Given the wealth of historical writing included in these models, that includes being able to have conversations with those who are already dead. What sort of leaps in technology this may lead to remains to be seen, but we can only assume it will be similarly transformative.

It is also left to our imaginations what higher forms of communication could yet await us. Perhaps some sort of thought-to-thought or spirit-to-spirit communication would unlock the highest era. Perhaps some of those higher forms of communication are reserved for the life after this one, though.

Of course, we have to acknowledge that not all advancement and technology is good. There is much to be concerned about, much division and destruction before us, and the scriptures predicted this exact dilemma in the story of the Tower of Babel thousands of years ago. Tomorrow we will take a closer look at that story, and what it means for us today.