Which Comes First?

It is a chicken or the egg question: Does Technology change the way we see our world? Or, does the way we begin to see our world make way for the invention and adoption of technology?

The last century has seen some major changes in technology and thought. Which came first? or are the changes occurring on a parallel path?

One theory goes that the invention of the typewriter fueled the women's rights movement, helped them get the vote and created the independent working female. In 1910, 90% of typists were women. Typing created paying jobs for women outside of the home. An interesting offshoot of this theory is that women by using their two hands to type rather than one to write began to engage the two hemispheres of their brain. The increasing parity of the "feminine" right side of the brain with the "masculine" feminine side of the brain led to a demand in parity between women and men. [Leonard Shlain writes about this in his book The Alphabet versus the Goddess]

OR, is it because women already possessed a greater communication between the left and right hemispheres of their brain (Women have 10-33% more fibers in the front part of their corpus callosum, the part of the brain that links the two hemispheres.) making them natural early adopters of the two handed typewriter technology?

The invention of the photograph coincided with the advent of realism in visual art. Did seeing photographs help artist to see their landscapes more naturalistically? Or, did the ability to see the world more naturalistically, realistically help to create photographs that were naturalistic. Or, is what we call realism actually what things really look like or have we just trained our eyes to see the world that way when we might have just as likely trained our eyes to see the world like Monet or Van Gogh?

I love my DVR (Digital Video Recorder or TiVo-like device). With it I can watch the TV shows I want when I want. I can pause, rewind and fast-forward television programs. I am the master of time. And the DVR fully expresses my experience of how I think time works. The digital clock on my computer tells me it is 7:19. The hands of my analog clock with a face on it say it is about a quarter after 7. I keep thinking time is not as linear as we are told. The DVR is an expression of that for me. I know that I had this thought about time before I had my DVR. What came first: the experience of time that is non-linear or the technology that expresses it?

When I think of time, I remember that the clock is a modern invention. Time was different for the Medieval Man before the invention, accuracy and proliferation of the clock. [A good read on this is the book Longitude by Dava Sobel] The 20^th century shift from analog time to digital time was also dramatic. As time has become more linear and literal, it is also becoming less exact and more fluid. Quantum Physicists tell us time is circular or simultaneous. It is even perhaps relative on not only the planetary scale but on the human scale.

I was reading this great book 1491: New Revelations of the Americas before Columbus by Charles C. Mann. I'll write about this book another time, but it included a reference to something I had heard before that I don't know what to do with:

The Olmec in Mesoamerica invented the wheel separate from the Sumerians in the Mesopotamia. Toys with wheels and axles have been discovered dating back to 1000 A.D. The circle or wheel was central to their religion and calendar. They used the wheel for other uses. However, they did not make carts or other wheeled objects for hauling. Why not? They made toys like carts. One reason is that they did not have beasts of burdens like oxen or horses to pull the carts. Perhaps it was because their country was wet and boggy so wheeled vehicles would not have been useful. And yet, they didn't even use the wheel to make ceramics or to grind corn. Mann writes: "The only thing more mysterious than failing to invent the wheel would be inventing the wheel and then failing to use it." (Mann, 1492, p.249)

What are our lacunae? (Lacunae, the plural of lacuna which is a gap or missing part, as in a manuscript, series, or logical argument. It's a great word. I had to look it up.) What are we missing? What obvious, in front of our face, thought, idea are we unable to see? What would happen if we discovered this gap? If we could fill this gap?

If we could see how different our world is . . .

If we could invent the technology that would help us to see our world as it really is . . .

Which will come first?