User:Mlaulin/sandbox

Techno-Social Natural Selection

Natural selection is the gradual process by which biological traits become either more or less common in a population as a function of the effect of inherited traits on the differential reproductive success of organisms interacting with their environment. It is a key mechanism of evolution [1].

My team was busy planning for the next Agile Release Train. One of my team members blurted, “My handwriting is so messy, it’s been a while since I wrote anything on paper using a pen”, while she was detailing a feature on a post-it. With the introduction of laptops, tablets and other devices as early as pre-school, will kids forget how to write on a piece of paper using a pencil or a pen? If yes, is it necessarily a bad thing?

The above scenario can be extended to various other situations: ·       People prefer learning to drive a car rather than learning to ride a horse and in the future, with the advent of driver-less cars, people may even mock at the concept of a steering wheel and gear system to drive. I could only draw a parallel to a YouTube video [2] that I had watched sometime back in which children mock at the concept of Walkman which was very popular hardly 10-15 years back (today is Nov 2014) ·       We use bulbs and electricity to light our homes and we may most definitely look at a home that uses oil and candle lights with confused astonishment ·       Again 15 years back, doctors used perform physical examination and diagnosis and then send the patient for lab tests to confirm their observations. While most doctors these days depend on lab test results to start with their diagnosis (diagnosis, in many cases, is almost complete by healthcare systems and analytics and awaits human verification) ·       Using Microsoft PowerPoint instead of OHP Markers and Tabletop Lumen Projectors [3] ·       Digital photography versus film-based photography. I still remember my dad taking pride in teaching me to load a photography film in his coveted Yashica [4] ·       Email versus surface mail ·       Buying meat from grocery store versus hunting ·       Shipping: Drone delivery versus door delivery etc. (we can keep going on)

The “Techno-Social” traits become either more or less common in our population as a function of the effect of acquired traits based on the differential innovative and technological success of humans. I would probably call this the “Techno-Social” Natural Selection.

Is losing a known skill in lieu of acquiring a new one necessarily bad? Is evolution bad?

References: 1.     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_selection 2.     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-PTfoqJJuOs 3.     http://www.amazon.com/Apollo-Overhead-Projector-Marker-V3000M/dp/B00006ID1W 4.     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yashica 5.     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwinism