Reporting Live From Tomorrow By Daniel Gilbert Summary

Technology and Happiness

People are rarely able to predict with any accuracy between how they will feel in the future, and so are often quite wrong about what will make them happy. Thus, when people meet problems, they always ask someone else to give them opinions. In the essay “Reporting Live from Tomorrow”, Daniel Gilbert suggests that beliefs, just like genes, can be “super-replicators”, given to spreading regardless of their usefulness. Thus even beliefs that are based on inaccurate information can provide the means for their own propagation. Finally, he finds people just want to get happiness from beliefs. Moreover, as the advent of science era, technology works as a surrogate to help people solve problems and get happiness. In the essay

“Attention Deficit: The Brain Syndrome of Our Era”, Richard Restak examines the brain’s ability to multitask and the consequences of multitasking as the result of technology impaction. Multitasking forces our brains to process ever-increasing amounts of information at ever-increasing rates.

Finally, he realizes technology makes people lose the ability to create happiness. As a result, although technology helps people make better decisions and improves their living conditions, it makes people lose the creativity and imagination to achieve happiness.

Although advanced technology acts as a surrogate that helps people make better decisions and saves their time; it distracts them from the everyday reality of life. Individuals face large quantities of problems in their whole lives, but they always get help from others. By contrast, if people try to solve every problem by themselves, they will waste a lot of time. Gilbert illustrates the situation as, “One of the benefits of being a social and linguistic animal is that we can capitalize on the experience of others rather than trying to figure everything out for ourselves”(211). People get benefits from communicating with others, because they share their knowledge and experiences with others. As a result, when they meet problems, they can use others’ experiences to get solutions. By contrast, if people do not talk with others, they have to solve problems by themselves at the expense of wasting a lot of time. Most people never

witness the formation of truths, but they know more truths than specialists. For example, a normal newspaper boy has a better understanding about the universe than Galileo, Aristotle and any other astronomers. Most astronomers spend their whole lifetimes only finding one truth, and then they share their findings with other astronomers. As a result, other astronomers can build their truths on the basis of certificated truths. As more and more astronomers share their truths with others, even a normal person will know all the truths without researching. Therefore, when people are in trouble, they can find solutions quickly if others are willing to share ideas with them. Moreover, as technology is increasing developed in the modern society, many people use technology as a surrogate to help them make decisions and solve problems. As Restak says, “as a result of technological advances we participate in many different and disparate ‘realities’, yet as a result of our attention and focus problems we can’t fully participate in them ”(419). Nowadays, as technology eliminates time and distance limitation, people can stay in several places at the same time. Thus, people can learn more ideas from several surrogates at a time. By contrast, in the past, people can only get ideas from one person at a time. As a result, technology works better as a surrogate than that of a normal person. However, although technology gives people benefits, it distracts them and makes them cannot work efficiently. For example, people talk with the person next to them and make a phone call at the same time; they not only have to talk on the phone, but also have to pay attention to the person next to them. Thus, they cannot focus on one activity at a time and it results in working inefficiently. Individuals can get ideas from many people at the same time by using technology, but they are easy to be distracted and cannot work efficiently.
Moreover, despite the drawbacks, people still tend to adopt the multitasking as it gives them temporary happiness.

There is no perfect belief in the world, but once they can lead people to better lives, then people will pass them to others. Gilbert explains how the imperfect beliefs work as, “False beliefs that happen to promote stable societies tend to propagate because people who hold theses beliefs tend to live in stable societies, which provide the means by which false beliefs propagate”(214). Initially, only a few people know it when a false belief first comes out. Once the belief has a positive effect on people, they will still pass it to others, even if they know the belief is false. In the end, most people accept the belief because they can get benefits from it. Money is one of the best examples to illustrate it. When people are very poor, they will try their best to get rid of it. However, people still work hard to earn money even if they are not poor any more. The rich people are not happier than people who have normal salaries, because earning more money means more work and less free time. By contrast, the people who have normal salaries only need to finish their tasks. People believe earning more money can make them happier. Obviously, the belief is not true because earning more money means more work and less free time. However, once people think they have enough money and stop working, there will be no labor in the market. Finally, the economy will break down

and people will live in a worse condition. Similarly, although technology distracts people and makes them cannot work efficiently, it helps them adapt to shifting attention from one activity to another. As multitasking becomes a popular trend, people gradually accept it because it can save their time. Restak explains the importance of multitasking when he states, “shifting attention from one activity to another-a strategy that is now almost a requirement for survival”(414). In the past, shifting attention from one activity to another is a symptom of the ADD/ADHD. Meanwhile, people think ADD/ADHD is an illness. Nowadays, as the increasing speed of life, people have to deal with more works in a shorter time than before. As a consequence, they have to multitasking by shifting attention from one activity to another. On one hand, employees will feel temporary happy if they can finish tasks quickly, because they will have free time to relax. On the other hand, employers will get temporary happiness if they can earn more money in short time, due to their employees can finish tasks quickly. Thus, the ability to shift attention from one activity to another becomes important. As a result, in the modern world, ADD/ADHD is seen as a special character rather than an illness.