Progress

Progress

Everything has its ups and downs. Progress just happens to be one of those things. It is double faced. It has the nice cheery face that is the side we see in the moment. The side that shows something new and improved that will make our lives so much easier. But there is a second face. One that most people do not see. The side that causes people to lose jobs and the side that makes some peoples lives much more difficult. It is intended to help us, but sometimes progress has consequences that we didn’t see in the first place.

        Take a laptop for example. Thirty years ago, computers did not exist. In the last thirty years computers have been invented, improved, and come close perfected.  They were invented to help people. Whether it was to take notes, to play games, or to write papers, computers were intended to help people, and make things more fun and faster. Computers seemed to make life easier, more smooth, and faster.

        Not to say that computers aren’t useful. They are. They make things much easier. But did the inventor of computers, Konrad Zuse, realize that he was taking thousands of people’s jobs away from them, leaving the secretary (cutting and pasting the typewritten stuff onto paper) and typewriters jobs behind? Did the ends justify the means?

        For me, yes probably so. I do about 75% of my homework on a computer, this post would almost impossible without a computer. One of the things I most enjoy about computers is how smooth and easy they make everything. I can type two words into the search box and find what I am looking for instead of reading and going through the library for hours. The ends do justify the means for me and my family, but for the families who had their business in typewriting, they have a whole other story to tell.

       This has been happening forever. The cotton gin may be a perfect example of double faced progress. It helped the plantation owners, but was the beginning of slavery in the south.

        Before the cotton gin, cotton farming required hundreds of hours to separate all of seeds from the cotton. In 1794, Eli Whitney revolutionized plantation owners lives. He invented the cotton gin. The cotton gin was a machine that had little teeth that let the cotton through and pushed the seeds out. This machine could generate up to fifty pounds per day of clean cotton. This was the start to not only a huge cotton industry, but also to slavery.

        The second face to the cotton gin was the slavery. You would think that the cotton gin would be a huge relief for the slaves. No more horrible hours of separating the seeds from the cotton, having dry crackling hands from all of the extended work days. The cotton gin made it so that plantation owners and slaves could do four times more work, and for the slaves it was mandatory that there was four times more cotton seedless by the end of the day. The cotton gin made large scale slavery not only possible, but necessary.

Look down at what you are wearing. There is a 99% chance that something you are wearing is cotton. Would you rather that be leather or jean? For me cotton is a huge part of my life, from Q-tips to cotton sweatshirts, to the dirty socks in my hamper, cotton is a huge part of my life that I would not be willing to give up.

In the end, progress ends up to be worth it. From laptops to cotton, progress has changed most people’s lives, including mine.

Sources:

Wikipedia: Eli Whitney, Cotton Gin, Konrad Zuse

http://static.cheaplaptops.org.uk/wp-content/laptopimg/2007/10/apple-mbkw-13sd.jpg

http://americanenterprise.si.edu/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/WhitneyCottonGin.jpg