May 28, 01
(by Karmayogi)
q
Technology is the expression of a mental formula of
work in matter in the form of a fashioned tool.
q
The birth of a technology in the mind of an engineer
is indicative of social maturity of scientific knowledge employed in work.
q
This social knowledge creates non-scientific working
individuals tuned to executing that technology on the floor of the factory.
They are known as technicians.
q
The technicians of the 17th century are
scientists of the 21st century by the advance in technological and
scientific culture.
q
The commerce of the different localities rises to
technological opportunities and begins to serve the needs of the new technology
by producing the processed raw materials and catering it to the public.
q
Technology emerges successfully, creating the human,
social, commercial atmosphere needed for it. This is technological
maturity of the society.
q
Technological maturity of the society implies the
advancement in the birth of appropriate organisations in the society in various
fields, along with social and individual culture.
q
At any given period, we see the
newly emerging technologies trying to integrate with the existing social
organisations, social culture, and social productivity, first overcoming the
opposition of the society to its advent.
q
From that moment, the new
technology embarks on a mission of gradually widening its integration in two
ways: 1) horizontally in the society with its organisations and culture, and 2)
vertically with the inner capacities of the individual in compelling him to
fashion new attitudes and new motives suitable to the occasion and express them
as new personal strategies.
q
This is a complex process of
social growth constantly witnessed in the society, visible at times of the
emergence of advanced new technologies.
q
Not only with technologies, but
with every new capacity acquired by the society, such as language, this change
is witnessed.
q
Thus, technology at any given time is the outer
symbol of man’s inner integrality vertically in the planes of his being and
horizontally in its outer social spread.
q
All human capacities inside are symbols –
psychological symbols – of all human activities outside.
q
The phenomenon we speak of about the Internet is
experienced by the society each time a new technology arises, such as car,
phone, radio, printing, writing, cooking, dressing, manufacturing, machinery,
cultivation, education, transport, communication, personal computers.
q
A new phenomenon in the society is NOT an excrescence,
but a natural integral growth from all its parts and their interactions. Once
it has emerged as a new phenomenon – technology, capacity, belief,
organisation, religion, etc. – it at once tries to further integrate itself
with every sector and segment of the society.
q
This new growth or new and further integration is
the social growth opening its avenues of prosperity to all sections
collectively and individually.
q
To avail of these emerging opportunities, the
collective as well as the individual develop their existing organisations and
personal character. New social organisations come into quick existence or new
extensions of the existing organisations take place. Individuals exhibit new
capacities or higher levels of old capacities.
q
Human intelligence, attitudes, and motives change
for the better individually and collectively, e.g. competition gives place to
cooperation, violent quarrels become negotiated settlements.
q
Frankness, secretive behaviour, trust, anger,
jealousy, levels of understanding the other man’s point of view undergo changes. In a monarchy, orders are passed at the
level of the king. The whole society behaves authoritatively when they change
to democracy, parliamentary behaviour changes to understanding the viewpoint of
the opposition. All the balancing phrases of English issue out of the birth of
democracy and its ways accepted by the society.
q
It is
possible for us to draw up a time chart of social progress with a dozen
dimensions. It will carry these transitions graphically. E.g. Growth of the
following can be traced between the two ends:
1.
Organisation
2.
Truth speaking
3.
Personal beliefs
4.
Religious worship
5.
Skills
6.
Physical security
7.
Human tolerance and temperament
8.
Levels of intelligence
9.
Transport
10.
Communication
11.
Medical cure
12.
Collective as well as individual FREEDOM.
q
In fact, to be meaningful, it has to be
comprehensive of all levels of human existence, almost an encyclopaedia in
scales.
q
Such a study will reveal to each nation the
magnitude of progress it has unconsciously made in several sectors and
strikingly reveal the enormous scope of progress within the present context.
q
For example, if this is done to Internet, it will at
once place the Internet on a par to Printing 700 years ago, i.e. 100 years
after its invention, thus revealing the enormous scope, maybe infinite scope,
of immediate progress.
q
For planners in the governments, for companies that
are trying to expand, for aspiring families for social upward movement, a new
lease of life will be given.
q
For the Individual, especially in the field of
computer, it will reveal that his wildest aspirations will be dwarfed by what
is offered to him.
q
For one who becomes conscious of this situation, all
life appears to be a life of Luck.
q
The use of maps came into existence a few centuries
ago in the West at the highest levels and fully spread to all levels a hundred
years ago. It is said a Londoner does not go out with that map.
q
In
q
The advent of Internet has made the availability of
information easy and quick beyond comparison.
q
As directories and maps have played a great role in
the progress of Western industry and Western life, the advent of Internet now
allows the compilation of fresh directories and fresh “maps” for nearly all
fields of human activities.
q
The prevalence and absence of superstitions of
diverse nature is in direct proportion to the facts available.
q
Facts are valuable but not usable until they are
organised into useful information.
q
This information is the raw material for the
directories and maps I speak of.
q
Agricultural productivity, based on the analysis of
the soil and application of micronutrients, has been enhanced about five times
in
q
Imagine the use of software that coordinates the
soil composition, prevalent micronutrients and productivity for the farmer
whose productivity is low.
·
For the planners, universities and farmers, it is a
boon.
·
For the software engineer, it is a career out of the
ordinary.
q
Customer information service has found a welcome
among customers and retailers in more than one way.
q
Can we not reduce the entire management expertise
now available to directories or ‘maps’ that would guide the managers of big
corporations and entrepreneurs of small companies? Which field will not lend
itself for this purpose?
q
Of the hundred areas, when decision-making is
reduced to an infallible process and offered as a software,
it will find great favour in the market.
q
Romance is an age-old topic. People quickly outgrow
romantic illusions. At its altar millions of marriages were sacrificed. It
exists at the level of physical need, physical attachment, emotions of the
body, vital attractions, vital heroism to live for another, mental ideas of
poetry, love, idealism, etc. Whether there is any precise definition of
Romance that can stand the test of the experiences of the ages, I do not know.
q
But one is possible. It is not only possible but all
of its shades on either side can be documents and conclusions drawn from it.
Though it has always been possible to compile such a directory, the Internet
makes such a composition eminently possible.
q
Of course, it will be a document more of marriage
than of Romance. The information, inference, and guidance of such a directory,
especially when it is comprehensive, are invaluable.
q
There is no walk of life which cannot be well served
by such a directory. Mankind or humankind will take a great step forward if
every field is fully served by such directories or ‘maps.’
q
Recently an eminent Dutchman said that if he could
find a formula for domestic happiness, he might even abandon the project of
discovering the formula of the universe.
q
Compilation of such a directory on historical
principles of human progress will reveal the formula readily. No one will doubt
its value. Such a directory will reveal that what we now consider to be a
mystery and tangle is after all the result of having our observations as
impressions instead of facts. Impressions replaced by facts will remove
age-old mental infirmities. We no longer need suffer the present superstitions.
Domestic happiness will revel itself as a formula.
q
Human progress is measured on various counts or
scales.
q
Human worth is in proportion to the human freedom
granted to him by his collectivity.
q
Freedom is the noblest measure of human progress.
Even happiness can only be put as the second best.
q
Every advance of any type brings in its own
definition of freedom.
q
Every technology advances the scope of individual
freedom
q
For the slightest crime, man lost his hand or even
head at one time.
q
Freedom is of many descriptions. One of them is
freedom to secure information. The
Internet is offering information as no other channel ever gave.
q
Often new technologies are made possible by new raw
material.
q
Thinkers should evaluate the Internet as a
technology that emerges now and assess its role in social evolution.
q
Such evaluation issues from a perspective.
q
Social perspective that leads one to evaluate social
instruments must understand social evolution.
q
The world is certainly in need of a Theory of how
the society has so far evolved and why.
q
Such a theory may include several facets or maybe
all facets must be included. We can consider one such approach.
·
Man’s knowledge that the earth is flat comes from
observation.
·
·
To the senses, the earth goes around the sun. To one
in universal consciousness, the sun goes around the earth. When human consciousness
touches universal consciousness in rare moments, one gets the glimpse of that
truth which his mathematical knowledge labours to prove.
·
Seeing electricity in the thunder, having that sense
which feels it in the air, systematic scientific thinking leads one to its
discovery.
·
The laws of physics that express as elevation in the
sky reveal to an observer who sees the possible relation to the birds’ natural
flying and man’s artificial flying.
·
Some medicines were discovered by observing animals
that are unaffected during the spread of epidemics.
·
Human observation can also see the symbols in life.
Observation of symbolism in life led to the discovery of writing.
·
Money as an exchange medium was created out of the
creativity of mind.
q
Human intelligence, faculties of the mind can be
arranged in some gradation or some sequence and each stage of civilisation can
be attributed to that. That offers us a scale.
q
Progress of civilisation has been understood as
progress for greater comfort. It is one result of his faculties integrating
with the possibilities of the environment.
Internet as the Instrument
of Subtle Knowledge:
q
Life is not fully gross, physical and material.
There is always a subtle part to it that is invisible. Of course, there is
another causal part of it that cannot be so easily felt or shown to another.
What is here called subtle is always described as higher skill. Anyway, a work
can be split into many minute parts and all those can be trained. When all
possible training is imparted and learned, there remains something untaught and
unlearned. We call it skill that comes by experience. It is that part which is
called here subtle. The gross part is teachable,
the subtle part comes from long experience, to those it comes, not to all.
q
We call that faculty insight, intuition,
resourcefulness, knack or even luck. That subtle part is also teachable if not
to all, maybe for the majority, sometimes to all. It comes from viewing the
part from the whole. Long experience often gives to doctors, teachers, generals,
lawyers, and leaders the touch of the WHOLE. The part seen
against it gives the insight. All solutions in Sherlock Holmes stories answer
to this description. Subtlety is to know the part not as a mere part all by
itself but as a part of the whole.
q
Internet now makes available to a patient a vast
knowledge, which only experienced doctors possess. Internet gives the patient
the knowledge of a disease which often patients do not share with their
doctors. In certain minor diseases which the doctor rarely comes across, the
patient can have a far greater information than his
doctor from the Internet.
q
Imagine the clients having as much knowledge as the
professional has. A doctor may feel his patients are doctors.
q
The Internet by giving vast stores of information to
a client offers the possibility of his having subtle knowledge, which only
exceptional professionals are endowed with.
q
After about 2000 years of warfare – physical prowess
settling legal or even moral claims – disarmament brings the battlefield to the
negotiating table. That is the distance in time humanity takes to move from the
physical plane of fighting to the subtle plane of negotiating.
q
The Internet throws open that possibility to all
sections of humanity in all their concerns.
q
If anything, it will have a far, far greater impact
on human functioning than universal education did at the turn of the 20th
century.
q
Seeing Internet in the perspective of the past that
developed it and the future it may develop for the society, one has the best of
chances to understand its role as an organisation which for the first time in
history became an institution without passing through the phase of being an
organisation.
q
Gold, diamond, oil, etc., made men madly rush to
them seeking wealth. Internet rushes to men to make them abundantly wealthy to
the extent of disregarding wealth in favour of higher social or human values.
q
It is a knowledge of the
Theory of Social Evolution that can make one fully appreciate the value of this
invisible institution offering subtle knowledge.
Presented by Growth Online