Our crazy world
08/01/14 05:30
The other day I saw a car with a bumper sticker that has been around for many years. It said, “Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean that they are not out to get you.” Maybe others don’t react to bumper stickers the way I do, but I see a lot of bumper stickers that are senseless or that make me wonder about the thoughts of the person who put them on the car. On the surface, the sticker is just a bit silly. The more I thought about it, however, the more I felt like telling someone what I thought. And you, readers, are the recipients of my rant which I am sure holds no interest for the person who put the bumper sticker on the car.
First of all, the statement is factually untrue. Paranoia is an irrational fear where no real danger exists. So if a person is paranoid it actually does mean that “they aren’t out to get you.” If there is a real danger, then the fear isn’t irrational.
More importantly, paranoia isn’t a joke. It is a serious mental illness that is very difficult to accurately diagnose and for which treatment is difficult and often involves medicines with nasty side effects. People who suffer from paranoia experience disruptions of their social lives, loss of ability to work and income, and untold amounts of suffering. The bumper sticker might have seemed funny to someone, but it isn’t funny to those who suffer from the illness or those whose lives are disrupted by the illness of their loved one.
Ranting aside, here is a story that I heard years ago. I can confirm it by Wikipedia, but don’t have all of the details. It seems that Guglielmo Marconi, often credited with the invention of the radio, conducted pioneering work in the development of long-distance radio transmission. He shared the 1909 Nobel Prize in Physics with Karl Ferdinard Braun “in recognition of their contributions to the development of wireless telegraphy.” He went on to found The Wireless Telegraph and Signal Company in Britain and made a commercial success of his inventions.
Marconi started his experiments at an early age and had trouble raising funds to purchase materials for his inventions. Once he had devices capable of carrying signals over hills and at distances greater than a mile, he needed additional funding to develop a device that would span even great distances. He wrote to the ministry of Post and Telegraphs, which was under the direction of Pietro Lacava. In the letter he explained his wireless telegraph machine and asked for funding. The letter was never answered. Later it was discovered that the minister had written “to the Longara” on the document. “To the Longara” was a reference to the insane asylum on via delia Lungara in Rome. In other words the minister thought that Marconi was crazy.
Real breakthroughs in human thinking are often that way. They are so filled with imagination that they challenge the old ways of thinking about the world. They challenge old visions of the nature of reality. In a way, you can understand Lacava. After all Marconi was claiming that he was sending and receiving signals without wires. The idea did sound extreme at the time. It was something that was generally considered to be impossible.
And yet, I’m using a wireless keyboard to type these words and a wireless modem to upload them to the Internet. Most readers will use wireless devices to read the words. Today we take Marconi’s ideas for granted and don’t question his sanity. It is just the way our world works.
Consider, however, for a moment, if Lacava was right. I’m not asking you to think about what might have happened had someone put Marconi in an asylum and his ideas been suppressed. It would only have been a short time before someone else discovered those ideas and continued the work. After all, Braun was conducting similar experiments at roughly the same time as Marconi.
Instead, think for just a moment about the possibility that the minister was right and the idea really is crazy. That would mean that we live in a crazy world. That it is crazy for someone to build a computer with built-in wireless capabilities and support for multiple operating systems that fits on a single SD card, about the size of a postage stamp. That is what the Intel Edison Quark mini computer that was released at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week is. It is crazy, really.
Consider some of the other crazy inventions that were announced at the show: The Goji smart lock reads fingerprints to allow access. It also takes photos and sends them to the smartphone of the owner if someone attempts to activate the lock. There was a bit of confusion about who had the largest TV. Samsung introduced their 105-inch curved TV, vision showed off a 120 inch TV (that’s 6 feet by 9 feet!). You might think that it is crazy to think that anyone might pay $152,000 for a television. It’s crazy!
Hyundai was sporting a collaboration with Google Glass that allows people to access information about their car to be displayed on their eyeglasses. There is an all electric Formula 1 Race car is capable of reaching 110 kph in less than three seconds. It’s crazy!
There is a heart monitor that sends signals to your smart phone, from which you can forward the information to the smart phone of your cardiologist to review so the good doctor doesn’t have to actually be in the same place as the patient. How about a harness with 17 body and head sensors each containing a magnetometer, gyroscope and accelerometer to translate body motion into action by gaming characters. The person wearing this harness can control the motions of characters on the screen. How about an electric toothbrush that analyzes your habits and reports on your smart phone where you are brushing adequately and where you might need a little extra attention. That information can be forwarded wirelessly to your dentist. It’s crazy!
There are robot toys controlled by phones, a crock pot that you can monitor and control with your phone, and arial photography drones just in case you want to take pictures of your neighbors from the sky. There are wearable cameras, solar chargers for phones and televisions that double as computers. It’s crazy!
The more I think about it, that minister might have been right. Marconi was crazy and his discoveries have launched us into a crazy world.
Then again, I may just be getting a little paranoid.
First of all, the statement is factually untrue. Paranoia is an irrational fear where no real danger exists. So if a person is paranoid it actually does mean that “they aren’t out to get you.” If there is a real danger, then the fear isn’t irrational.
More importantly, paranoia isn’t a joke. It is a serious mental illness that is very difficult to accurately diagnose and for which treatment is difficult and often involves medicines with nasty side effects. People who suffer from paranoia experience disruptions of their social lives, loss of ability to work and income, and untold amounts of suffering. The bumper sticker might have seemed funny to someone, but it isn’t funny to those who suffer from the illness or those whose lives are disrupted by the illness of their loved one.
Ranting aside, here is a story that I heard years ago. I can confirm it by Wikipedia, but don’t have all of the details. It seems that Guglielmo Marconi, often credited with the invention of the radio, conducted pioneering work in the development of long-distance radio transmission. He shared the 1909 Nobel Prize in Physics with Karl Ferdinard Braun “in recognition of their contributions to the development of wireless telegraphy.” He went on to found The Wireless Telegraph and Signal Company in Britain and made a commercial success of his inventions.
Marconi started his experiments at an early age and had trouble raising funds to purchase materials for his inventions. Once he had devices capable of carrying signals over hills and at distances greater than a mile, he needed additional funding to develop a device that would span even great distances. He wrote to the ministry of Post and Telegraphs, which was under the direction of Pietro Lacava. In the letter he explained his wireless telegraph machine and asked for funding. The letter was never answered. Later it was discovered that the minister had written “to the Longara” on the document. “To the Longara” was a reference to the insane asylum on via delia Lungara in Rome. In other words the minister thought that Marconi was crazy.
Real breakthroughs in human thinking are often that way. They are so filled with imagination that they challenge the old ways of thinking about the world. They challenge old visions of the nature of reality. In a way, you can understand Lacava. After all Marconi was claiming that he was sending and receiving signals without wires. The idea did sound extreme at the time. It was something that was generally considered to be impossible.
And yet, I’m using a wireless keyboard to type these words and a wireless modem to upload them to the Internet. Most readers will use wireless devices to read the words. Today we take Marconi’s ideas for granted and don’t question his sanity. It is just the way our world works.
Consider, however, for a moment, if Lacava was right. I’m not asking you to think about what might have happened had someone put Marconi in an asylum and his ideas been suppressed. It would only have been a short time before someone else discovered those ideas and continued the work. After all, Braun was conducting similar experiments at roughly the same time as Marconi.
Instead, think for just a moment about the possibility that the minister was right and the idea really is crazy. That would mean that we live in a crazy world. That it is crazy for someone to build a computer with built-in wireless capabilities and support for multiple operating systems that fits on a single SD card, about the size of a postage stamp. That is what the Intel Edison Quark mini computer that was released at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week is. It is crazy, really.
Consider some of the other crazy inventions that were announced at the show: The Goji smart lock reads fingerprints to allow access. It also takes photos and sends them to the smartphone of the owner if someone attempts to activate the lock. There was a bit of confusion about who had the largest TV. Samsung introduced their 105-inch curved TV, vision showed off a 120 inch TV (that’s 6 feet by 9 feet!). You might think that it is crazy to think that anyone might pay $152,000 for a television. It’s crazy!
Hyundai was sporting a collaboration with Google Glass that allows people to access information about their car to be displayed on their eyeglasses. There is an all electric Formula 1 Race car is capable of reaching 110 kph in less than three seconds. It’s crazy!
There is a heart monitor that sends signals to your smart phone, from which you can forward the information to the smart phone of your cardiologist to review so the good doctor doesn’t have to actually be in the same place as the patient. How about a harness with 17 body and head sensors each containing a magnetometer, gyroscope and accelerometer to translate body motion into action by gaming characters. The person wearing this harness can control the motions of characters on the screen. How about an electric toothbrush that analyzes your habits and reports on your smart phone where you are brushing adequately and where you might need a little extra attention. That information can be forwarded wirelessly to your dentist. It’s crazy!
There are robot toys controlled by phones, a crock pot that you can monitor and control with your phone, and arial photography drones just in case you want to take pictures of your neighbors from the sky. There are wearable cameras, solar chargers for phones and televisions that double as computers. It’s crazy!
The more I think about it, that minister might have been right. Marconi was crazy and his discoveries have launched us into a crazy world.
Then again, I may just be getting a little paranoid.