Cat's Cradle pt 1

I was extremely excited to start reading Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut. So far it has been very interesting. However, while reading it, I often could not help but wonder if Dr. Hoenikker was human. He showed no signs of emotion, fear or anything. Then I wondered if he was like that because his whole life was based around  science and technology. He placed himself in a technology based world that did not know emotion and fear, and there fore learn to adapt to that. Dr. Hoenikker was able to come up and create things (equipment, machines and etc) that an average human brain could not imagine.

Both Kurt Vonnegut and Kim Vincente (author of The Human Factor) write about technology and how it may or may not be above and beyond our comprehension. They go about it in different ways though. Vincente asks the reader to think about technology that may be too complicated for us, while Vonnegut picks one piece of technology (atom bomb) and elaborates on that. Another differenece is that Vonnegut talks about a piece of technology that can destroy millions of lives while Vincente discusses different pieces of technology that are meant to enhance our lives.

Technology is often thought of as something mechanical...a new cell phone, new software, a totally new machine...but really technology doesn't have to involve anything mechanical. KimVincente mentioned how technology can be something as simple as a work schedule. It is hard to think of that as technology, but technology is something that influences our lives-certainly our work schedule influences it. 

While reading both "The Human Factor" and "Cat's Cradle" I thought about if technology really causes so much trouble in our lives than why infact do we put up with it, why do we keep it around in the first place? In many countries there is no technology, we consider them 3rd world countries. They live simple, worries less (or just have different worries); could America ever go back to that? Could Americans drop their cell phone, computers, cars and etc without looking back, could they adapt to living that way? Is it just the fast pace of us, Americans, that makes the technology level rise? We always seem to be in a rush to get things done, but if we took a minute to step back and slow down would things improve even just a little bit?

To improve our lives, I believe, we need technology- we would not be able to turn away from those amenities, and the greatest of them all-medical care- we would be lost without. I do think that we need to slow down, or more specifically we need to slow technology down (the production of new technology). Slow it down at least to a rate where we have a chance to learn what the latest piece of technology does and how it does it.

Technology has the capability of giving one person too much power, in my opinion. In Cat's Cradle Dr. Hoenikker created the atom bomb, something that can destroy millions of lives and then he created "ice-nine." Something as simple as "ice-nine" could destroy the world. It was meant to freeze streams, rivers, mud etc, but everything in the world is interconnected. By freezing one thing it is possible to freeze almost the entire earth, and destroy mankind. Technology is great, but it is important to think of limits and remember that somethings humans aren't meant to be incharge of.