📘 Part 3: Inventions

This episode's vocabulary

Tumble dryer (noun) - a machine that dries wet clothes by turning them in hot air.

Incubator (noun) - a device for keeping birds' eggs at the correct temperature to allow young birds to develop until they break out of the shell.

Intangible (adj.) - impossible to touch, to describe exactly, or to give an exact value.

To replicate (verb) - to make or do something again in exactly the same way.

Sapient (adj.) - intelligent; able to think.

Coronal mass ejection (noun) - a cloud of particles ejected from the sun's surface during a solar flare.

Innovation (noun) - (the use of) a new idea or method.

Plumbing (noun) - the water pipes and similar systems in a building.

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Questions and Answers

M: Let's talk about household appliances. What household appliances make people lazy?

R: Well, I'm not sure any of them do, really. I mean, if anything, they've made people more productive. If you don't have to spend forever preserving food or washing clothes by hand or doing the dishes in the same manner, then you're free to do other things. And for most people, that involves some other sort of work. It's not like people just stopped working when something came along to replace a particular job, they moved on to something else.

M: What's the most helpful innovation at home?

R: Well, I, I'm torn between refrigerators and the washing machine  tumble dryer combinations, to be honest, it would be hard to get by without a place to keep foods from going off for a long period, which is what a refrigerator does. But it's also nice not to have to spend ages washing your clothes by hand or waiting for them to dry. If I had to choose one of those two, I think the washing machine. I could live off dry foods and be okay for the most part, but I certainly wouldn't enjoy it.

M: What electrical appliances do people in your country have at home?

R: Oh, I'm not an expert, but probably all of the modern conveniences like, like washing machines, and like microwaves, for example.

M: What kind of invention can be used at school?

R: Just about any kind you care to name to be honest, I imagine the most common ones for students would be calculators, computers and tablets to access and store information. But the last school I was at had a fridge and an oven. We even had an incubator for live chicken eggs.

M: And how can technology be used in the classroom?

R: Well, just in the same way that pen and paper can be used. It's all about accessing and storing information. So maybe it makes it more efficient, for example, or more easily personalizable. If we can use such a word.

M: And do you think in general, modern technology makes people lazier or no?

R: No, I just go back to my previous comment. I think it frees people up to do other things. It's not made any one lazier, definitely.

M: Do you think artificial intelligence will replace human teachers?

R: Probably not for a variety of reasons. I mean, firstly, there's something intangible about being human that despite all of our flaws, the only thing we can really have a connection with. And label as real as a person. The connection teachers, our students enables learning. And I'm not really sure an AI can replicate that. Moreover, assuming an AI is sapient, there's no reason to think that they would have an interest in teaching, since that's primarily a human concern you could order them to but who's to say they would even care what you ordered them to do or not?

M: Do you think there'll be any negative effects resulting from future technology?

R: Probably. There are negative effects from everything that anyone does? Probably increasing social isolation, perhaps. And an increasing dependency on technology means that people might be more vulnerable to shocks to the system like a coronal mass ejection from the sun, which causes an EMP (electromagnetic pulse).

M: Do you think it's good that new inventions are appearing so often?

R: Well, first of all, I'm not sure they are. But let's say they are. And yes, it's good, because it means that the spirit of innovation is alive and well. It would be worse if they weren't because it would mean that people were running out of ideas, and I really hope we're not because there's still lots of problems that have to be solved.

M: Tell me about the most important inventions in the last 100 years.

R: Well, what would you like me to tell you about them what they are? I suppose the big ones are the development of any digital technology like the internet or anything that could be portable. Mobile phones are a good invention because you can take them anywhere and it enables communication at a fast rate, and then you have plumbing, like indoor plumbing, mass indoor plumbing has probably saved millions of lives.

M: Thank you, are you for your inventive answers!

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