SAMVAD (Together In Conversation‪)‬ Sunil Rao

Namaste, Welcome to SAM-VAD (Together In Conversation), this is where we try to draw your attention to things that matter and the importance of our attention, why is that? Because ‘let us remember this again, ‘What we give our Attention to matters,’ as Our life’s experience would ultimately amount to whatever we had paid attention to.







Attention: is as fundamental as food; and we go blundering about, seeking ways to assuage the craving, instead of learning how to provide ourselves with what we need, sensibly and calmly. Once our attention is drawn to the mechanism of why and what we give attention to, it is as if a veil has been stripped off and we become freer in our action and choices. And that is our endavour.







This week I bring to your attention another excerpt which we have titled – History – Oral & Written – A Perspective from the book titled ‘The Axemaker’s Gift’ – Technology’s capture and control of our minds and Culture by James Burke and Robert Ornstein.







This book is about the people who gave us the world in exchange for our minds. The gifts we accepted from them gave us the power to change the way we lived, but doing so also changed the way we thought. It is a stunning account of how scientific thinking and technology have gained control over the way we perceive and value the world. 







History – Oral & Written – A Perspective







Key to the new way of thinking is that where pictographs were in a sense representations of the object, alphabetic letters were not. For example, an “A” represented nothing specific in nature. The alphabet codified nature into something abstract, to be cut and controlled impersonally. In this way, to some extent the alphabet removed us one more step away from our environment. It also gave us a new view of the past.







While literature was one obvious offspring of the development of the alphabet, a less obvious outcome was the concept of history. Oral memory deals with the present, and recollection is concerned with what is relevant to the present. Biography in an oral tradition is not as much careful scholarship as it is a creative act, in which events are woven into coherence with the aid of imagination. But the accumulation of written records makes it possible to separate the present from the past. Somebody who can read is able to “look back” at what happened before, in a way that the non-literate person never can. Written material is by necessity “dated” and fixed, while an oral tradition is “living” and fluid.







Excerpt from ‘The Axemaker’s Gift’ by James Burke and Robert Ornstein







I am sure that you will enjoy reading this book; you can buy your copy from the following link:









The Axemakers Gift: Technology’s Capture and Control of Our Minds and Culture









Enjoy reading it with your family, friends and near and dear one’s.







Namaste!

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Namaste, Welcome to SAM-VAD (Together In Conversation), this is where we try to draw your attention to things that matter and the importance of our attention, why is that? Because ‘let us remember this again, ‘What we give our Attention to matters,’ as Our life’s experience would ultimately amount to whatever we had paid attention to.







Attention: is as fundamental as food; and we go blundering about, seeking ways to assuage the craving, instead of learning how to provide ourselves with what we need, sensibly and calmly. Once our attention is drawn to the mechanism of why and what we give attention to, it is as if a veil has been stripped off and we become freer in our action and choices. And that is our endavour.







This week I bring to your attention another excerpt which we have titled –Plato and Alphabetic Thinking from the book titled ‘The Axemaker’s Gift’ – Technology’s capture and control of our minds and Culture by James Burke and Robert Ornstein.







This book is about the people who gave us the world in exchange for our minds. The gifts we accepted from them gave us the power to change the way we lived, but doing so also changed the way we thought. It is a stunning account of how scientific thinking and technology have gained control over the way we perceive and value the world. 







Plato & Alphabetic Thinking







Plato expressed his concerns about how alphabetic thinking might affect our view of knowledge in an admonition that would go largely unheeded until the late twentieth century:







It will produce forgetfulness in the souls of those who have learned it, through lack of practice at using their memory, as through reliance on writing they are reminded from outside by alien marks, not from inside, themselves by themselves: you have discovered an elixir not of memory but of reminding. To your students you give an appearance of wisdom, not the reality of it; having heard much, in the absence of teaching, they will appear to know much when for the most part they know nothing, and they will be difficult to get along with, because they have acquired the appearance of wisdom instead of wisdom itself.







Excerpt from ‘The Axemaker’s Gift’ by James Burke and Robert Ornstein







I am sure that you will enjoy reading this book; you can buy your copy from the following link:









The Axemakers Gift: Technology’s Capture and Control of Our Minds and Culture









Enjoy reading it with your family, friends and near and dear one’s.







Namaste!

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Namaste, Welcome to SAM-VAD (Together In Conversation), this is where we try to draw your attention to things that matter and the importance of our attention, why is that? Because ‘let us remember this again, ‘What we give our Attention to matters,’ as Our life’s experience would ultimately amount to whatever we had paid attention to.







Attention: is as fundamental as food; and we go blundering about, seeking ways to assuage the craving, instead of learning how to provide ourselves with what we need, sensibly and calmly. Once our attention is drawn to the mechanism of why and what we give attention to, it is as if a veil has been stripped off and we become freer in our action and choices. And that is our endavour.







This week I bring to your attention another excerpt which we have titled –Tools & Lifestyle from the book titled ‘The Axemaker’s Gift’ – Technology’s capture and control of our minds and Culture by James Burke and Robert Ornstein.







This book is about the people who gave us the world in exchange for our minds. The gifts we accepted from them gave us the power to change the way we lived, but doing so also changed the way we thought. It is a stunning account of how scientific thinking and technology have gained control over the way we perceive and value the world. 







Tools & Lifestyle







As the population centers increased in size and number, new axemaker gifts facilitated their organization and maintenance. The ox-drawn plough boosted grain production, the wheel and the sail transported it, the potter’s wheel made jars to store it, and the waterwheel ground it into meal for people now living in houses made of kiln-fired bricks in communities protected by metal weapons. Draft animals fertilized the soil, the plough increased the area of workable land, and “short-fallow” farming (with frequent cropping and growing) produced crops in faster sequence. Things were changing faster now.







Excerpt from ‘The Axemaker’s Gift’ by James Burke and Robert Ornstein







I am sure that you will enjoy reading this book; you can buy your copy from the following link:









The Axemakers Gift: Technology’s Capture and Control of Our Minds and Culture









Enjoy reading it with your family, friends and near and dear one’s.







Namaste!

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Namaste, Welcome to SAM-VAD (Together In Conversation), this is where we try to draw your attention to things that matter and the importance of our attention, why is that? Because ‘let us remember this again, ‘What we give our Attention to matters,’ as Our life’s experience would ultimately amount to whatever we had paid attention to.







Attention: is as fundamental as food; and we go blundering about, seeking ways to assuage the craving, instead of learning how to provide ourselves with what we need, sensibly and calmly. Once our attention is drawn to the mechanism of why and what we give attention to, it is as if a veil has been stripped off and we become freer in our action and choices. And that is our endavour.







This week I bring to your attention another excerpt which we have titled – New Tools & their Effects from the book titled ‘The Axemaker’s Gift’ – Technology’s capture and control of our minds and Culture by James Burke and Robert Ornstein.







This book is about the people who gave us the world in exchange for our minds. The gifts we accepted from them gave us the power to change the way we lived, but doing so also changed the way we thought. It is a stunning account of how scientific thinking and technology have gained control over the way we perceive and value the world. 







New Tools & their Effects







With the acceleration also came major change in the nature of the relationship between us and our axemakers. When tools like the alphabet appeared, they encouraged new ways of thinking. The linear nature of the alphabet facilitated sequential, reductionist, logical forms of expression and thought. Its ease of use promoted literacy and with it the involvement of citizens in the governing process.







Above all, the alphabet made it possible to ask questions that were not immediately essential to the well-being of the community. These questions, about matters such as the origin of the universe, the nature of life, or the sum of the internal angles of a triangle, generated increasingly esoteric axemaker vocabulary. They also changed the way we thought about the way we thought.







Excerpt from ‘The Axemaker’s Gift’ by James Burke and Robert Ornstein







I am sure that you will enjoy reading this book; you can buy your copy from the following link:









The Axemakers Gift: Technology’s Capture and Control of Our Minds and Culture









Enjoy reading it with your family, friends and near and dear one’s.







Namaste!

a class="a2a_button_whatsapp" href="https://www.addtoany.com/add_to/whatsapp?

Namaste, Welcome to SAM-VAD (Together In Conversation), this is where we try to draw your attention to things that matter and the importance of our attention, why is that? Because ‘let us remember this again, ‘What we give our Attention to matters,’ as Our life’s experience would ultimately amount to whatever we had paid attention to.







Attention: is as fundamental as food; and we go blundering about, seeking ways to assuage the craving, instead of learning how to provide ourselves with what we need, sensibly and calmly. Once our attention is drawn to the mechanism of why and what we give attention to, it is as if a veil has been stripped off and we become freer in our action and choices. And that is our endavour.







This week I bring to your attention another excerpt which we have titled – Social Effects & Innovations from the book titled ‘The Axemaker’s Gift’ – Technology’s capture and control of our minds and Culture by James Burke and Robert Ornstein.







This book is about the people who gave us the world in exchange for our minds. The gifts we accepted from them gave us the power to change the way we lived, but doing so also changed the way we thought. It is a stunning account of how scientific thinking and technology have gained control over the way we perceive and value the world. 







Social Effects & Innovations







The social effects of axemaker’s innovation also shape those aspects of our lives that cannot be so readily observed. For example, In the late eighteenth century, when the Industrial Revolution suddenly brought hundreds of thousands of farm workers into city factories, their potentially disruptive presence provoked draconian legislation, which included capital punishment for such minor offenses as stealing a handkerchief. Today, television coverage of the glitterati provides influential role models for behavior, while television soap operas offer glimpses of a world whose values many viewers admire and adopt. 







Through history, when the axemaker’s changed our world in these ways, we were in most cases willing and eager participants in the matter. Most of the time the axemaker’s gift was irresistible. More often than not it was a cure for a disease, or a faster way to do something, or a means to facilitate what we wanted to do, So we came back for more, unmindful of the other, not easily visible, changes the gift might eventually bring. But we could never unmake history, and with each gift there was no choice but to adapt to the effects of the change.







Excerpt from ‘The Axemaker’s Gift’ by James Burke and Robert Ornstein







I am sure that you will enjoy reading this book; you can buy your copy from the following link:









The Axemakers Gift: Technology’s Capture and Control of Our Minds and Culture









Enjoy reading it with your family, friends and near and dear one’s.







Namaste!

a class="a2a_button_email" href="https://www.addtoany.com/add_to/email?linkurl=https%3A%2F%2Fqsconsultants.in%2Fblog%2Fsocial-effects-innovations%2F&linkname=Social%20Effects%20%26%20Inn...

Namaste, Welcome to SAM-VAD (Together In Conversation), this is where we try to draw your attention to things that matter and the importance of our attention, why is that? Because ‘let us remember this again, ‘What we give our Attention to matters,’ as Our life’s experience would ultimately amount to whatever we had paid attention to.







Attention: is as fundamental as food; and we go blundering about, seeking ways to assuage the craving, instead of learning how to provide ourselves with what we need, sensibly and calmly. Once our attention is drawn to the mechanism of why and what we give attention to, it is as if a veil has been stripped off and we become freer in our action and choices. And that is our endavour.







This week I bring to your attention another excerpt which we have titled – Gifts & Change from the book titled ‘The Axemaker’s Gift’ – Technology’s capture and control of our minds and Culture by James Burke and Robert Ornstein.







This book is about the people who gave us the world in exchange for our minds. The gifts we accepted from them gave us the power to change the way we lived, but doing so also changed the way we thought. It is a stunning account of how scientific thinking and technology have gained control over the way we perceive and value the world. 







Gifts & Change







Their gifts not only changed the world of their time but also remain in use, to affect later periods. Any modern environment is a mixture of these world-altering changes, whose origins range back thousands of years into the past. The fact that you are able to read this book originates with the effects of the fifteenth-century printing press. The food you ate for breakfast today was delivered to the supermarkets thanks to the nineteenth-century combustion engine. The clothes you’re wearing now began their existence on a prehistoric loom. You are alive, in all probability, thanks to one or another medical advance dating from some time in the last hundred years or maybe older than that. Your workplace probably includes thirteenth-century paper, sixteenth-century lathe-turned furniture, nineteenth-century plastics, fifteenth-century toilets, seventeenth-century electricity powering nineteenth-century telephones, and early twentieth-century computers. The water supply in the restrooms is delivered by sixteenth-century pumping systems. The paint on the office walls contains nineteenth-century artificial dyes. Your business itself likely runs on a top-down decision hierarchy dating from command structures first established seven thousand years ago to run the first city-states.







Only rarely, if ever, did we look back to examine the effect of our passage on the world, because our axemaker’s always led us forward, toward the horizon we never expected to reach.







Excerpt from ‘The Axemaker’s Gift’ by James Burke and Robert Ornstein







I am sure that you will enjoy reading this book; you can buy your copy from the following link:









The Axemakers Gift: Technology’s Capture and Control of Our Minds and Culture









Enjoy reading it with your family, friends and near and dear one’s.







Namaste!





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