Tag: technology

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free trade & free markets

We Need iPads

Every once in a while somebody explains that “we” don’t need this or that product, however great it may be and however great the demand for it. For example, a tech reviewer dubs Apple’s latest iPad models “largely unnecessary,” given last-​year models almost as capable.

The charge of unnecessariness is surely false when we’re talking about customers who do want the most cutting-​edge technology and can put it to good use. But it’s false in a broader perspective too — unless we suppose that all advances in human civilization beyond the level of the hut and the bearskin are “largely unnecessary” to human survival and well-being.

If technological progress is necessary, so are key aspects of how that progress happens, including the fact that it so often happens by “largely unnecessary” increments. Any given marginal advance in computer or PC tech may have been dispensable. But the same can’t be said of the process of cumulative improvement as a whole. Consider, for example, that some ninety percent of what we now do on our PCs would have been impossible to do with the 1980 PC. Our 2014 laptops could not have been crafted without myriad intermediate advances.

As striving human beings, our needs evolve as our means improve and enable us to pursue ends that we could not have pursued with less powerful means. Ergo, I welcome every little improvement we can get. And I can hardly wait for my 2025 iPad.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets

High Tech versus Disaster

Amidst all the tragedy dealt by the earthquake in Haiti, there have also been inspiring tales of coping and survival — some occasioned by the wonders of modern technology.

Consider the cell phone and its muscular cousin, Apple’s versatile iPhone.

The iPhone was the star of Dan Woolley’s self-​rescue effort. Woolley, an American filmmaker, was in Haiti when the earthquake buried him in rubble. Help would not arrive until three days later. So he consulted an iPhone application to learn how to make a tourniquet for his leg and bandage his own head wound. Without the software, Woolley might not have survived.

Few in Haiti have iPhones, but many have access to some kind of cell phone. For weeks after the earthquake, electricity was out. Landlines were dead too. But in a patchy way the cellular network was up within days. Voice calls remained iffy, but you could easily send text messages.

Without electricity, though, how to power up a drained cell phone and contact a loved one? That’s where street-​corner entrepreneurs came in, hooking up power strips to car batteries and charging 40 cents or so to charge a cell.

We often take technology for granted. But the high-​tech that makes life easier in normal times can also help us contend with disaster. As do the markets that make the technology and its maintenance possible. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.