As they do not know any different can they say that this technology has improved their quality of life? — Luke1i1

This sounds less like you're talking about quality of life, and more like you're talking about individual happyness. From what I have heard, happyness is far less related to material circumstances than people tend to assume. It is nevertheless related. Starving or being mauled by a bear are not fun.

There is also the fact that technology allows us the necessary leisure time to figure out how to make people happier. Psychotherapy presumably was less prevalent in 10.000 BC.

It is true, the more bread you make less shit you have to eat.However, on the other hand personal possessions tie you down. To state that people didn’t understand other peoples feelings 10,000 years ago is incorrect. Call it whatever you want

I'm 67 years old and my quality of life has been awesome. I only had the earliest effect of technology when I heard about the Russians putting a man into space on my 10'' B/W TV that got 2 channels. Watching all the technology evolve to todays world was a blast to experience. But as for quality of life. I wouldn't change 1 second of my life for the life you guys will experience. To hell with all the technology.

Live Long and Prosper.

Whether your busting coconuts or busting atoms; you are still just using tools you stumbled upon while, probably. looking for something else. We are just really smart monkeys who happen to have more tools than the guys in the trees. I feel Quality of life is determined by the society you live in and your need to be accepted by that society. After very basic needs are met and sustained, any technology isn't really helping you in what should be your ultimate state of mind. It's what's up there that counts.

I remember my dad talking about how he used to hand deliver documents for his clients and then wait days or weeks for those documents to be processed and approved and only then can he get moving with regards to fulfilling the request. After doing so, he'd then wait a few weeks (sometimes months) for actual payment (he had a field plowing business). Because he had a limited number of tractors, he couldn't manage more than a few clients at a time in the 60s.

Now, we can be anywhere and make and fulfill transactions in minutes. That's a lot of time saved, allowing for more transactions and more business. And payments are also near instant.

So you could potentially be far more productive while at the same time have lots of free time to do whatever you wanted.

However, all this speed means we could also quickly get swamped or we could end up fighting for clients as business becomes easier for others to get into your niche. This is very stressful and our quality of life could suffer greatly.

But for sure, I'd rather be hospitalized now vs say in the 60s or earlier. I'm glad we're going through this Pandemic now vs the time prior to cable, internet etc...

Where does medicine figure in your conception of technology? With readily availble analgesics, antibiotics, and other kinds of drugs, a death warrant for a pre-modern human is but a minor irritation to be dealt with, quite effectively I must add, with the right dose of the right medicine or a sterile scalpel in well-trained hands for a modern human in this day and age.

If by technology you mean machines - tractors, power drills, excavators, even robots and possibly AI - then I'd say what I've always been saying or am under the impression that I've been saying, to wit, that our minds and bodies are out of sync. What I mean is our minds have the uncanny ability to figure out how something can be done in more efficient and faster ways and machines were born out of that but the problem is our bodies are so built that some amount of physical activity has a maintenance function. Since machines literally make physical activity pointless or even a setback to what we've been told is "progress", our bodies' maintenance-oriented physical activity takes a hit and thus the litany of health problems that follow: obesity, hypertension, diabetes, cardiovascular illnesses mainly which, in your book, should read as poor quality of life.

The solution, in my humble opinion, can take three forms:

One, stop using tools altogether and that means doing everything by hand if you know what I mean. It'll be like traveling back to the stone age. I fear we won't find many takers for this proposal.

Two, wait it out, let our bodies, through the slow process of evolution, adapt to less physical activity in a way that eventually makes everything that has to do with our bodies completely obsolete, a relic, as it were, of our evolutionary ancestry.

Three, genetic engineering. Our minds seem fully capable of effecting such a feat: we could, gene-wise, edit out our weaknesses and edit in our strengths. This, however, is something that's bound to face objections on ethical grounds; after all, weaknesses and strengths are value-laden terms.

The fundamental question in this discussion, what quality of life is, was never agreed upon, and therefore the discussion became a series of loosely related individual opinions...then, naturally, fizzled out.

In other words, if you can’t agree on what quality of life means, how can you have a discussion about how it compares b/w different generations?

For example, is longevity an essential component of quality of life? I suspect someone might object that it depends upon the “quality” of that longevity, so we’re back to the basic question...

Is good health necessary? What if that good health was maintained only for a short duration, then suddenly ended in death? Mozart died at 35 after a brilliant and influential career, Keats at 25; would you trade your obscure longevity for his brief immortality?

Is fame an essential component of quality of life, recognition in your own lifetime? Mozart’s body was carried out to the graveyard by a few close friends and family, who abandoned the procession after a great rainstorm arose... no one knows for sure exactly where he is buried.

In other words, if you can’t agree on what quality of life means, how can you have a discussion about how it compares b/w different generations? — Todd Martin

It’s not so hard to find a beginning point to the question.

Quality of life for all people would begin with access to food and water, shelter and a feeling of security. I have no statistics but I imagine there are many people still living close to that edge. So how would technology impact on their quality of life? Substantially I think.

@Brett you’ve not told me what quality of life is, rather, you’ve told me it’s beginnings; is “food and water, shelter and a feeling of security” equal to quality of life, or just its inception, prerequisites? If not, what more is needed that technology can provide?

Can all technology do is give us what is necessary for quality of life, not what is definitive?

Is all we need to have a quality life the things that pertain merely to our physical well-being?

This is a general meaning given to quality: “ the standard of something as measured against other things of a similar kind; the degree of excellence of something.”

Probably not very satisfying in terms of your question, but still, a beginning.

Someone sitting in dirt on a street in Delhi, blind and deformed, knows what quality of life is about. It’s that very moment. It’s not a prerequisite to anything, except surviving that moment.

Can all technology do is give us what is necessary for quality of life, — Todd Martin

Is this rhetorical?

@Brett btw, I’m glad you had “no statistics”: statistics in the biggest questions never shed light, only obscurity.

Is all we need to have a quality life the things that pertain merely to our physical well-being? — Todd Martin

In the beginning, yes.

Brett btw, I’m glad you had “no statistics”: statistics in the biggest questions never shed light, only obscurity. — Todd Martin

Word games. My reference to statistics was in regard to the number of people living on the edge, not about the meaning of “the quality of life”.

@Brett No, Brett, I did not intend to be rhetorical. I honestly ask (and, btw, we have still not agreed on what “quality of life” means or is), what more than the mere necessities of life can technology promise us?

Can all technology do is give us what is necessary for quality of life, — Todd Martin

This suggests there might be something else technology might contribute. Is that what you mean?

The mere necessities of life have been easily accessible since antiquity, and have resulted in great cultural achievements, without modern technology, since Greece and Rome.

and, btw, we have still not agreed on what “quality of life” means or is — Todd Martin

That’s fine. Maybe we’ll find a ground to meet on.

It is late, alas!...I must go. Look forward to future conversation, Brett.

The mere necessities of life have been easily accessible since antiquity, and have resulted in great cultural achievements, without modern technology, since Greece and Rome. — Todd Martin

Probably not for everyone though. Access to clean, safe water has not always been available to everyone. Consequently life is one of physical struggle, disease, high child mortality and early death. If the early death is the male adult of the family then life becomes harder again.

Basically are we doing more harm having technology — Luke1i1

I think it’s a double edged sword. We may not have the ability to manage what we develop, despite there being useful technologies among what we do develop. Assuming it’s us creating technology of course.

The mere necessities of life have been easily accessible since antiquity, and have resulted in great cultural achievements, without modern technology, since Greece and Rome. — Todd Martin

Interesting that you break technology up into two eras. So what is modern technology, how would we define that and where’s the crossover point?