The Technological Revolution on America Life
Abstract: Future technologies will revolutionize life in the United States of America, and will affect the entire world population over time. Boldness, inevitability, and adaptability all led, or will lead, to the development of this issue. First, the paper will discuss how boldness, and only boldness, leads to accomplishments and boon. To succumb passively will not help achieve goals. Second, the paper will discuss the inevitability that technologies will advance due to human desire and how the want for profit is slaked. Lastly, the paper will cover how the world adapts to changing lifestyles and learn to utilize daunting revelations. It is unavoidable that society will advance, as it has done in the past, and humans will adapt to the changing life as known for decades. The book, Stranger in a Strange Land, written by Robert A. Heinland, as well as many other resourceful documents and sources, will assist in proving these points.
Every person always seems to want the latest technology. This truth has existed for centuries and will never change in the future. With the invention of shovels, people wanted them because it was easier than digging with their hands. When cell phones were invented, people sought this new form of communication-on-the-go. When, in the book Stranger in a Strange Land, Valentine Michael Smith finds ways to levitate objects and make things disappear while standing twenty feet away, it is not a surprise that people become interested. Future technologies will revolutionize life in the United States of America because of boldness to express one’s ideas, inevitability to change, and people’s ability to adapt to this change.
“Originality,” said Anthony Storr, “implies being bold enough to go beyond accepted norms” (Thinkexist.com). Therefore, to be original, and to accomplish tasks like an original, requires boldness. According to the essay, Freedom, Boldness, and Economic Creativity, the World Value Survey stated, “You will never achieve much unless you act boldly” (DiPietro, 41). Also, in this same article, DiPietro included some research to prove this statement, and he stated the following:
…societies that place a higher value on boldness tend to have higher overall levels of economic creativity. This is just as one might expect. In order to engage in creative activity people must, first, externally be given the opportunity and, second, internally be endowed with the willingness to overcome obstacles and seize the opportunity. … Boldness gives people the necessary courage to undertake risky innovative ventures (DiPietro, 44).

This quote by DiPietro implies that boldness leads to greater economic success because of economic creativity. If one is more likely to develop and express ideas, these factors will benefit society in the long run. Many times, a business or economy may decline in power and strength due to a lack of powerful ideas, despite their presence, but the owners of them did not have enough confidence in them, or boldness to express them to the community. A lesson given by John Laychak once for the Bible Club of Foran High School, titled Mission: Christ, touched on this idea of boldness. Laychak stated, in a very powerful manner, “boldness means that you are not afraid to look like a fool in front of someone else; boldness means that when your prayers for healing do not work the first ninety-nine times you try, you should always try that one hundredth time, because you never know when it will take just one more prayer” (Laychak). Laychak also showed a video segment from a television show, It’s Supernatural, where the guest speaker on that particular show, who preached in places all over the world, used his boldness and absolute faith in the infallibility of God to speak out and heal the blind and perform many other enigmas. He never had fear to look like a fool if the miracles happened to not work certain times. Boldness leads to success with faith in the extent of miracles that using boldness can do. As Emily Dickinson once stated, “fortune befriends the bold.” (Robinson). This fortune leads to available money and resources to utilize ideas and invent new technologies from those ideas. Another example of boldness in action is the invention of Thomas Alva Edison. Edison was bold and brave enough to work with a dangerous element, heat energy, which had very few experiments based on it. He devoted much of his time toward searching for the proper filament to use in commercial incandescent light bulbs in order to decrease the provincial, austere society (Ryder). In the years following his successful attempts, he was bold enough to introduce his new ideas and inventions to the community for commercial use, and he followed up by patenting his invention. “Laugh at yourself,” said Alan Alda, “but don’t ever aim your doubt at yourself. Be bold. When you embark for strange places, don’t leave any of yourself safely on shore. Have the nerve to go into unexplored territory” (Thinkexist.com). In the novel, Stranger in a Strange Land, written by Robert A. Heinland, the Man from Mars, or the main character, whose name was Valentine Michael Smith, carried out his actions boldly. First off, boldness led to the invention of new technology, and the polarization of this new technology, which led to the exploration of the first manned spaceship to Mars. Two travelers in this spaceship gave birth to Smith, the sole survivor when it crashed on the surface of the planet. Smith was then taken up and raised by Martians for nearly twenty years, starting at a very young age. When the Champion, a spaceship searching for the lost craft, finally found Smith, they brought him back to Earth, and he boldly accepted the new conditions of the Earth environment, including changes in gravitation, society, culture, and much more. Mike came to a strange place, as Alda suggests, and he did not leave any of himself back on the planet Mars. The book clearly explains that when Mike “groks”, or understands, something new to him, he must be present in the situation in fullness or he will not comprehend. For example, at one point in the book, a girl kisses Mike, and Mike has never been involved in this type of behavior before. The girl then later describes that when Mike kisses a girl, he puts his whole self into it, not thinking about anything else. She tells her friends that a normal man would have at least part of his mind thinking about something else, such as upcoming tax bills due, what he would do next with the girl, and other things, making the kiss seem very transient. But Mike is present in the kissing in fullness, all the time. Smith never has fear to try out a new behavior and leave his comfort zones, as shown by this kissing because kissing did not exist on Mars (Heinland). Without spacecraft technology, Smith would not have come from Mars, proved his boldness by kissing, and encouraged others to not have fear to try or invent something new. In addition to trying to “grok” his surroundings, Smith showed boldness in Stranger in a Strange Land by teaching a small group of earthlings the ways of Mars. Boldness led to Smith teaching others about Martian ways as well as letting others teach him about Earth ways. For example, Smith shows his new “water brothers,” or close, trusting friends bound by water, that he can levitate objects without being near them and make objects (inanimate, animate, biotic, or abiotic) that have wrongness disappear into nothingness. He also teaches them that elaborate clothing is not always necessary. In turn, the people of Earth teach Smith how to swim, handle money, and run a business. Smith even shows his seemingly limitless boldness by leading the Martian religion, meeting with supreme government officials, and letting his body get bombarded by stones by a mob without turning away. Michael Valentine Smith did not keep any of his ideas to himself in the book, and because of that he turned into a very successful and a very wealthy being (Heinland). This boldness to express one’s ideas will revolutionize life in America because people adapted to these ideas as their way of life. According to the article, Step onto the Stage of Boldness, written by Andy Robinson,
Leadership, professional development, and personal growth require us (DEMAND us) to take risks, to "push the envelope" and to occasionally (frequently?) step onto the stage of "boldness." Being bold requires courage, being bold may put us in a vulnerable position; but being bold also creates opportunity, opens doors and gets the attention of others -- others who can help us, others who can partner with us in making amazing things happen, and others who can champion our cause (Robinson).

A progressive can take this approach to promote their ideas, as long as they have courage, leadership, strength, collaboration, and many other skills. Every famous inventor has been a progressive, believing in continuing social advancement, improvement, or reform. Thomas Edison had all these skills, and likewise did Valentine Michael Smith. Momentous events can not, and do not, occur without someone having used their boldness abilities. Boldness means having the confidence to share one’s ideas and ingenuity, like Edison, explore new and unknown lands, like Smith, and not having fear to look like a fool in front of crowds of people, like Laychak pointed out. With this definition of boldness, it can lead to wonders, including the invention of new technologies, which are then put widely into use, the adjustment of life due to those new technologies, and the success because of this adjustment of life. It is inevitable that technologies will advance due to human knowledge, desire, and want for profit. The human brain can contain an abundance of information such as problem-solving, reading and researching, reasoning, and memory (KidsHealth). This information compiled into one place can lead to new ideas that could improve society. An average human will then utilize these ideas because they may wish to acquire fame and money on the sales of their new products. It is inevitable that, with these technologies put to use, they will change life as known by most people today. Each technology invented has inevitably led to a change in lifestyle. For example, the invention of cars in the early twentieth century led to a new method of transportation and people wanting to take a jaunt in their new cars. Furthermore, agricultural inventions led to more efficient ways to farm, leading in turn to a fewer amount of rural workers. Finally, the Internet invention in the late twentieth century greatly changed life in the informative age because it made the spread of information many times faster (Bedi). Agriculture began millenniums ago, and it still exists today. Through the years, however, new and more efficient methods of farming have developed. An article entitled Agriculture, found on Grolier Online, illustrates this point very well:
Power-driven machinery and the electrification of farms have greatly increased production. This has led to an increase in the size of farms and a decrease in the number of farm workers. One person operating large, efficient equipment can produce much more than a group of workers without machines.
Farm technology continues to improve. Already, modern agriculture is doing away with the plow, which caused soil erosion and used too much energy from humans, animals, and tractors. Using minimum-till or even no-till agricultural practices, farmers save time and money (Agriculture).

Juggernaut farming inventions, such as the tractor and plow, meant that numerous workers in the fields became less necessary than before. As a result, people without a job left for the cities and a more urban lifestyle; a drastic change from the slow, relaxed and set-back country life to the fast-paced, rushed, and busy city life. In the country, things got done whenever they got done, as long as the work was paced and did get done. However, in the city, there was always a set deadline for everything. Furthermore, this move to the city was not simply a sojourn, but lasted as a permanent shift for most people. The Internet became most prominent in the 1990s, spreading from the 1989 idea of Tim Berners-Lee for the World Wide Web (Bedi). By the last few years of the millennium, nearly everyone owned a computer, which greatly changed American life. Before the invention of the computer, people needed to research material in books such as encyclopedias and history books. This required extra time, both for flipping through pages and making the trip to the public library and back. With the Internet, browsing for information required less time, and work could become completed at a faster rate. It also may have increased the laziness potential for the everyday American because, instead of rising from the chair to walk to the library, one could just stay in a chair. Lastly, the computer made the spread of information many times faster, because instead of traveling by letter or personal visits, information could spread easily via e-mail, instant messaging, and other computerized techniques. The invention of the computer was unavoidable because the goal of tycoons, raising additional money, can never be satisfied. Therefore, new experiments and inventions have changed, and will continue to change, life in America, and Americans will continue to include these inventions in their everyday lives and adapt to the effect they each have on life. People will adapt to changing times in the future just as people have adapted to changing times in the past. For example, with the invention of automobiles in the early twentieth century, people immediately began buying the new Ford Model T as a faster form of transportation. Trains, which had been the main form of transportation before Ford’s invention, quickly fell in popularity to the car, for it could travel shorter and longer distances alike as opposed to mainly longer distances (Bedi). Furthermore, people adopted the computer into their lives after its invention and the price decreased enough for one to exist in every household. Three decades ago, the computer did not have prominence in the lives of the average American. However, in today’s world, schools rely on the fact that students have computers at home or at least have access to a computer. Even parents can no longer escape a job that does not involve computers. This access, as well as the knowledge of how to work with a computer, is a major expectation of employers and employees for any job today. The computer will likely remain a central part of society for many decades to come. Furthermore, today’s technology will likely advance to more compact and new inventions to come in the future, and people will continue to adapt their life to accommodate these innovations. Past and future technologies have and will revolutionize life in the United States of America and in the world beyond. Space opportunities presented through new technologies will lead to people showing boldness by volunteering to travel in a land they have never traveled in before; the limitless realms of outer space. Smith in the book, Stranger in a Strange Land, traveled into an unknown world by transitioning from Mars to Earth, for example. Astronauts like Louis Armstrong exercised boldness by being the first man to set foot on the moon. Inventors prove that they are bold enough to present their ideas to society and take action without having fear to look like a fool if it does not work. Boldness leads to success overall, even if small failures present themselves within. Because of boldness to wish to earn money, people introduce new inventions to society, such as Edison’s light bulb which is still used today. The continual chain of progress leads from one invention to the next, with improvements along the way. Today’s society contends with the fact that it is unavoidable, or inevitable, that technologies will continue to advance due to want for profit and progress. Industrialization and improvement revolves around progress. The Industrial Revolution, for example, best described as a period of change and progress in Europe that eventually spread to include the remainder of the globe, included countless inventions (Cleland). Lastly, if the people in the world expect to continue to live on Earth, they must learn to adapt to the changes presented by this progress. In conclusion, because every person wants to have the latest technology, our society will continue to inevitably advance as the years go on, revolutionizing life as known today. Future technologies will make great changes to life in the United States of America and the world because of boldness to extend outside of one’s comfort zone, unavoidable changes due to this boldness, and the ability of the people to adopt these changes into their everyday lifestyle. Countless inventions will appear in the decades and centuries to follow, continuing along the progress meter; most of which no single person can imagine today. One single idea by one man can mount into a drastic change to American life.

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