The Spirit Of Progression Of Civilization

If there exists a commonality between past human civilizations and present human civilizations, it would be the spirit of progression. Humanity innovates through its constant grasp of new knowledge in order to progress as a civilization. However, humanity's thirst for progress has blinded it into an ignorance which has resulted in the regression of the natural environment. From the early Mesopotamian society to our modern day technological society, humanity has constantly advanced under a constant change. The human race constantly produces feats of human ingenuity as seen in our history. Only five thousand years ago, the first instances of an organized agricultural system were developing in the fertile lands of Mesopotamia (Gezzehei, lecture).

It is well established in science that any theory is tainted by uncertainty. One man who is very well familiar with uncertainty is Carl Sagan who asks us "to question the conventional wisdom" (Sagan 1). All wisdom that is known was at some point derived from a human mind. It would be naive to unquestionably rely on all human wisdom knowing that each notion was at one point extracted from a flawed human being. Fortunately and unfortunately "human beings are... highly motivated to find regularities [and] natural laws," in life, meaning, humans have a tendency to search for the rules in the game of nature in order to find ways to succeed (Sagan 3). Moreover, once a human comes to discover a rule of nature, it leaves room for us to become complacent because we believe we "know" the rule completely well. For example, as previously stated Carl Linnaeus entertained the idea of classifying all living things in an encyclopedia and he created various categories in which each species would fit in such as Mammals, Birds, Amphibians, and Fishes. At the time, Linnaeus did not believe he had incorrect definitions in his encyclopedia and the stunning fact about the encyclopedia, Systema Naturae, is that nobody ever questioned its credibility. It was unchallenged until Comte de Buffon, a

One of the most prominent of these inventions is the use of Google. Google is the web based search engine which instantly searches for web content using algorithms. In a general sense users are able to, "hop from one source to another," endlessly through a swarm of search results (Carr, 1). Some would argue that the open access of information has allowed a fast and efficient research process. Despite the lauds, Google is influencing humanity in some form. Some suspect that Google may be changing the way modern humans think, and in a negative way. Some argue that, "[Google] may be weakening our capacity for a kind of deep reading... And our ability... To make rich mental connections that form when we read deeply" (Carr 1). Immediacy and efficiency are the principles that a Western civilization following capitalistic values would undoubtedly propagate. The question remains: at what cost is this happening? Slowly, man may be losing the ability to deeply ponder the wonders of the universe, whether it is the entirety of the universe or the composition of a small grain of salt as Carl Sagan would inquire. Not to mention, intellectual discussions will become obscure if the thinking is done for us by a search engine. However, little of Google's influence on humanity is certain. What we do know is that we still do not know. Google is a multi-billion dollar company that will still exist in the foreseeable