To clarify my position a little, I acknowledge that every technological innovation has a different "technological benefit" to "complexity cost" ratio; some are grately worth it, some are not worthy at all, and a gradient between those. Maybe I might better rephrase my question as "Has our civilisation crossed the break even point, on the cumulative "technological benefit" to "complexity cost" ratio ?"

So the signs are there, but it's not (yet) come to the breaking point where the only options open to people are to completely abandon themselves to technology (a.k.a. the Matrix) or drop out of the system completely and withdraw to a life completely without it.

I would slightly argue against this last phrase. Let's take agriculture for example. If food stores and supermarkets were taken away (for whatever reason) do you think it would be possible for the current population to survive by farming/hunting/gathering? I would argue that these skills have been in time. Farming, for example, was generally lost during/directly after the Industrial Revolution.

I think that many people would starve to death because they would not be able to find or make food for themselves.

Also, I would argue that the human race is slowly losing its skill to survive when alone. For example, if the average human today was taken, and inserted in Africa, I feel he would not survive without the help of others.

Therefore, I think it could be said that yes, technology can reach a breaking point where further technology hurts the human race as a whole.

I would slightly argue against this last phrase. Let's take agriculture for example. If food stores and supermarkets were taken away (for whatever reason) do you think it would be possible for the current population to survive by farming/hunting/gathering? I would argue that these skills have been in time. Farming, for example, was generally lost during/directly after the Industrial Revolution.

I think that many people would starve to death because they would not be able to find or make food for themselves.

Also, I would argue that the human race is slowly losing its skill to survive when alone. For example, if the average human today was taken, and inserted in Africa, I feel he would not survive without the help of others.

Therefore, I think it could be said that yes, technology can reach a breaking point where further technology hurts the human race as a whole.

I would point you to a phrase I often encountered back in my high school civ classes: division (or specialization) of labor. Human civilization has come so far precisely because we don't need to have everyone working to procure food, clothing, and lodging for themselves (I seem to recall some estimate of hunting/gathering requiring about 20 hrs per week to maintain liveable rations). By having a group of people dedicated to those tasks, the others are free to build up new constructs (i.e. technology) to serve both in our procurement needs and in other desires.

I do think that we are starting to reach a level where people will become so dependent on technology that a power outage will be like a mini-Alderaan... millions of voices crying out in pain and suddenly silenced... :mad:

Surely the complexity has always been there. It's just awareness and understanding of it that has changed, resulting in being able to use it in different - and far more useful - ways?

Plz Help me

Set rs9 = db.OpenRecordset("select * from patient_profile", dbOpenDynaset, dbExecDirect, dbOptimisticValue) ->>>> this query written on vb6 and its execute succesfully but Set rs9 = db.OpenRecordset("select distnict name from patient_profile", dbOpenDynaset, dbExecDirect, dbOptimisticValue)->>> not only this when i use aggriate function like max, min etc its didn't execute. can any body help me. plz. what is the solution?

Yeah i agree with you OP, lets get "back to primitive"...

Yea, right. Pull the plug on your home electricity and see how long you'll last without a computer:) I hate it when the power goes out during a storm. And if you want the return to the "good-old-days" you have to also take the bad with the good, more disease, earlier death, plague, unsanitary conditions, child labor, and the list is a really really long one.

Nope -- I'll live in today's world despite all its flaws.

Offhand, I'd say the fire, stone, and bile would be worse. The obscure code and exception are, theoretically, solvable. The other isn't.

> Yea, right. Pull the plug on your home electricity and see how long you'll last without a computer.

Would you mind if we didn't have an option? I guess no, so as such its not a problem.

And if you want the return to the "good-old-days" you have to also take the bad with the good, more disease, earlier death, plague, unsanitary conditions...

Come on Mel, look at the world around you and you would find excellent substitutes of the above mentioned things.

> child labor

"Slavery is not dead, its just that we don't recognize it."

Yea, right. Pull the plug on your home electricity and see how long you'll last without a computer:) I hate it when the power goes out during a storm. And if you want the return to the "good-old-days" you have to also take the bad with the good, more disease, earlier death, plague, unsanitary conditions, child labor, and the list is a really really long one.

I don't know. The best week I had over the last 20 years were spent in a log cabin in the middle of Yellowstone.
No TV, no radio, no telephone, no computers, bison and elk walking around the cabin evenings.

Just me and a good book after it got too dark to photograph the wildlife.

But - with respect - the most likely reason that it was 'the best week ever' was because deep down you knew you could go back to the other life once you were through with the experience.

Your/our complicated life paid for it and allowed you to eat and survive while you were out there.

It would have been far less enjoyable if you had to live like that with no provisions, no fuel, and no money all of the time, with starvation and death the automatic outcome of failure.

probably, but it does show that one doesn't need computers and gadgets to have a good time, which is what the allusion was ;)

And I know for a fact that it's quite possible to survive without all that.
Of all those gadgets the only thing I had access to until about the age of 15 was a television.
We didn't have computers, computers were big things the size of rooms that a university or large company might be able to afford, certainly not a family (even a family with a quite decent income).
iPods and stuff simply didn't exist (I do say about 15, which is when Sony introduced their first Walkman portable casette player, which I bought when the price came down).

We could have survived like that indefinitely, living on the edge of a forest region near several farming communities where the grocer and butcher got their products fresh from the farm and the baker baked his own bread. The mill used to produce the flour had changed from water power to electric not too long before we moved there.

Of course it's possible to survive without it all :) But you're talking about necessity versus choice.

The original posts asked if civilisation was worth the complexity that goes with it.

People who have no choice but to survive at the lowest level of complexity have no say in the matter. Ironically, those of us at the other end have the opportunity to help them, but we usually don't.

And life is an ongoing construction, so it doesn't really matter what we didn't have as kids. What matters is what we do have right now - since that's what we'd have to give up.

The thing is: living in the wilderness in 2007 in a western state is not the same as living in the wilderness in an undeveloped country.

Necessity versus choice, again.