I am sure all of us simply enjoy predicting the future. How will the next generations of storage devices look like. In what ways our children will be different from us ? I am sure they will have something new to teach us like we had something new to tell our parents. What will change. Will it be better or for the worse ? Obviously I have no answer.
Also sometimes it is extremely thrilling to realize that the future's stars are probably one among us. My lab mate may probably win the "Turing award". The girl who used to win prizes for the school in singing competitions may become synonymous with our era's music in our grandchildren's text books. Again GoK.
My mind was filled with such thoughts when I saw the following "Wiki Quote of the Day:"
" They say that each generation inherits from those that have gone before; if this were so there would be no limit to man's improvements or to his power of reaching perfection. But he is very far from receiving intact that storehouse of knowledge which the centuries have piled up before him; he may perfect some inventions, but in others, he lags behind the originators, and a great many inventions have been lost entirely. What he gains on the one hand, he loses on the other. "
---------- ~ Eugène Delacroix
How extremely true. Every decade has something new to teach its children. In the form of inventions or wars or art. But that does not mean that the child should be deprived of some niceties which his parents got. Sometimes I wonder that if we dont pass on what we have to the next generation, probably down the line someone would keep reinventing the wheel. Also suddenly i understand the importance of keeping up some traditions, doing some rituals and sticking to some culture. But how I wish that my forefathers had passed it on to me with more care and rigor than just as a bunch of rules. That way I do not need to spend time questioning and brooding over them.
It is very good to think of finer ways of doing things. To expand our knowledge base and to redefine rules. Every man ought to do it to full fill the purpose of his life. But shunning our predecessor's lifestyle completely is slightly uncomfortable. This is slight hypocrisy on my part
because many a times owing to other comforts I want to do away with certain practices.
We can in no way get the total essence of all our ancestor's knowledge. We should at least pass on what we have acquired and what we have refined with logic and reason to the next generation.
