When Technology Overcomes a natural barrier, it leads to a revolution
Historically, natural barriers
have always halted or delayed human progress. Technology is a means to overcome
a natural barrier. Before the invention of printing press around 14th
Century, human memory was a limiting factor in determining the nature and scope
of learning and teaching. A student’s ability to learn is limited by natural
memory she has been endowed with and his gained skills to manage it- remembering
and recalling. A teacher’s ability or facility to teach is limited by his
preferences. The advent of book and human’s ability to put knowledge with in
the covers of a book- heralded new waves of liberation. Student was no more at the mercy of a teacher
to learn- don’t have been in teacher’s physical proximity to learn from him.
Nor the flow of teaching depended on the whim and fancy of the teacher. A
student can literally do away with the teacher and can depend on books as
reliable source and means of knowledge. In addition a teacher, who can put his
knowledge into a book, can teach more students than he can meet or manage.
Moreover,
a student can always get back to books for reference thus relieving his mind
and memory from ‘stocking” knowledge and instead employing those resources to
“think’ and “deliberate”. At a higher level printed books also liberated people
from adhering to traditional and ‘vested and limited” ’ interpretation of
writings – be it Bible or great books of Greek civilization. Thus newer interpretation of bible led to
religious revolution in Christianity and divided it into Catholics and
protestants and in France, newer insights and interpretation of ancient Greek
works such of Aristotle and other eminent writer resulted in French revolution
demanding for new social order based on newly found values – Liberty, Human
dignity, freedom, Government and more. Thus it can be safely asserted that any
technology that overcomes a natural barrier unleashes new wave of human
possibilities and eventually lead into revolution. The invention of printing
press and ability to produce books – was directly responsible for at least one
religious and another momentous socio-political revolution. Not just that- it
is said that book determined the emergence and structure of modern university.
One can not imagine building a library in the absence of producing books in
large numbers and there can not the concept and subsequent practice of
university. As we can see it later- this true of any invention or tool that
humanity has invented.
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