“Dovreekspressen”. The Norwegian States Railway NSB’s Pride in the 50’s and 60’s. The BM 88 Dovre Express prototype made by NEBB in the 1940’s.

Fascinating Amtrak double-decker trains in the US.

The crazy world records on land and water.

Wonderful pictorial reportages of everything from streamlined double-decker express trains, the world’s first jet-powered passenger aircraft Comet 1, stood here side by side with world famous technological adventurers, as the British Donald Campbell.

BOAC’s De Havilland Comet 4, worlds first jet passenger plane, with secured oval windows(Prototype Comet 1 from 1952 had many disasterous accidents, because square window bolts couldn’t stand the pressure on 40.000 ft.)

 Donald Campbell at Lake Eyre With his World record Bluebird

Campell set speed records on water and land all across the globe. His crafts should like the fairytales of Espen Ashlad travel as fast on water as on land. However, on land, it was particularly John Cobbs with its silvery Railton Mobil Special who took the first records. On 3 September 1947 at Salt Lake Bonneville Sands between Nevada and Utah, he ashored the world record with a speed of 393 mph./ 634 km’t

   The Railton Mobil Special at Bonneville

         World record holder John Cobbs

                   World record holder Donald Campbell,

Railton Mobil resembled a sarcophagus with rounded front and a long skatlike tail. The future would unfortunately prove that these crafts were as much coffins as marvels of speed. In 1952 when Cobb was trying to beat the world record on water, at Loch Ness in Scotland, he was killed in his “Crusader”, with Queen Elizabeth as a spectator.

Killed was also David Campell in 1967 in his Bluebird K7 on Cuniston Water in England..Campbell in his Bluebird K7 a few minutes before his Deadly crash on Cuniston Water, England in 1967.

Technology has changes the world dramatically!

Most technical inventions between the covers of “The Wonders of Technology” seems museal and antiquated today. With everything that has happened on the fields of IT and Space Science, computerized aircraft navigation, advanced defense technology like drone warfare, not to mention the development of industrial and social robots, – the world has changed totally..

 Space station

Speed records not only apply to the transport sector. Everything is supposed to go faster than the fastest, in all areas, except the area of human aging.

Botox treatment removes wrinkles and natural face reactions that human beings need to observe in order to interpret socially.

When technology mimics man.

Many products today are also guaranteed being untouched by the human hand. Our own time’s technological marvels are beginning to make us redundant.

In a report written by two Oxford scientists in 2013, “Computerazion and Future Jobs in Norway” it is assumed that 47% of Norwegian jobs will be subjected to automation over the next few decades. In the US, scientists expect that 95% of the current store employees must surrender their jobs to technology.

Also in the care sector in Japan, the machines and robots gradually take over.

 Different types of robotization

Do we really need this type of rationalization and dehumanization of society?

– Life saving technology

Arguably newer laser technology rescues many people’s eyes. Advanced diagnostics using CT, MRI and PET scan, save very many lives.

. PET-scan machine.(Positron Emission Tomography)Pet scan images of the human brain

 MR machine. (Magnetic Resonance)

Without the laprascope and modern keyhole techniques many surgical interventions would have had a much greater risk. Cardiac Surgery with a specialized surgeon in one town and the operating room with the patient and robot arms in another, also belongs to the medical technolog’s fabulous achievements. Here only on the field of medicine and on the data frontier, we could easily fill up several new volumes of “The Wonders of Technology”. Modern laprascopic technique in the operation room

– Living librarians vs. screens and data programs.

What I have not yet told about our school library, is that it had two very pleasant librarians. The two wise ladies could not be replaced by ten computer screens with Bibsys and Alma software! This is because they were alive, and experienced people. People who could see you, and even read you as an open book sometimes. Aside from that they were able to inspire and give you comfort through literature.  When my mother died in that period, it was very good for me to be able to seek refuge at the school library.

Reading room in a typical school Library         A nice elderly librarian helping you out when computers and programs like BibSys and Alma weren’t invented yet.

           The old BibSys program

          The newest “Alma” searching library system

– One day however there was a big crisis.

I did not find “The Wonders of Technology”! – You will not try another book then, asked the elderly librarian. – If you have something on the nuclear-powered ship Savannah and the atomic bomb it’s okay for me, I  replied.

   Worlds first atom driven ship “NS Savannah”

– What about the story of Madame Curie, the librarian asked.             –Madame Curie discovered the elements of radium and polonium, and won the Nobel Prize in physics?

             From the physics of atombombs (text has been removed to avoid copying)

to Madame Curie’s Radium

– It has a lot of atoms in it, if not exactly bombs, the librarian said. I reluctantly agreed, and I admit today that meeting these vibrant professionals was essential to broaden my reading interests, and even start browsing the fiction books home in the bookcase. Through these ladies I also got more respect for the most amazing invention in the universe – the human brain.

.     The human brain

We are spellbound when machines can mimic us in so many fields. Many of us have been fascinated by sci-fi robots C-3PO and RD2D from Star Trek movies, and WALL-E, and HERE, in the film with the same name.

 Wall-E and from StarTrek and  the interactive programmed woman HER from the film HER with Joaquin Phoenix as the man falling in love with HER

 

In the real world, we have the super talented robot “Asimo,” as President Obama literally bowed to Tokyo in 2014.  Here Barack Obama played football with a robot.  Some of us are frightened, however, that so many machines are invading our work-places and steal the jobs from us.

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 Very advanced Japanese robot “Asimo” and President Obama

Not in  the least those who develop social robots, realize how extremely advanced the human body and brain are, says Heather Knight doctoral student at Carnegie Mellon research. She will be joined by the afore mentioned researchers Osborne and Frey at Oxford University. They say that robots are very bad to tackle overly complex situations, they can not interpret emotions, and have little creativity.  Check my newest article september 2019 on AI, robots and artificial intelligence.(Robots that gain consciousness and become like humans.

Horses are like people, – herd animals.

 “Show me your friends and I’ll tell you who you are,” an old adage says. As a psychologist, I know that we as herd animals are characterized by those we have around us. If we spend much time together with empathetic, thinking and responsible people, it will also eventually characterize our way of functioning. If we on the contrary switches the growing number of people in the community with digital solutions and robots, this will also change our way of being together.

Meeting with others, we interpret facial expressions, body language and gestures as much as words. We are navigating by complex bio-psycho-social cues. For thousands of years, we have greeted, taken at, touched and been touched by each other’s presence.Just as long, we have nodded, smiled and laughed together.

Worlds apart or are they just chatting with each other thru technology?

At it’s best human encounters are wondrous.  On a regular basis  it is indispensable to develop our minds and our emotions..

Father and son face to face

Just a walk in the store after a long day with conflicts at work and unrest at home, can lift your mood if there are nice people behind the counters and checkout.

  One of the many very nice and helpful KIWI workers in action

Who will benefit the most from robotization?

It is not enough to set speed records. The automation of the community may soon become as the speedcrafts of Campell and Cobb, – streamlined coffins,  where the human being are eventually killed. Here we all have a responsibility!

We are actually transferring more and more services to technology That will neither do humanity, taxes nor social life a service ! A few might be rich from it, but most of us will get poorer! Because we need to meet each other face to face also in the future !

  People who meet face to face at work.

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NB: This article is biased from a western perspective, and will be followed up in 2020 with Russian, Chinese and hopefully  also more japanese technical wonders.

Examples of different technological inventions the last Three hundred years.