By John Crawmer with Bible Research

What motivates you to use technology? Is it to stay connected with friends and family? The desire to see instant updates about your favorite sports team? Or, the ability to compute large amounts of data with a few clicks of a button? The daily activity of picking up your smartphone to check on a message, watch a video, or share an experience is pretty common. Whatever your motivation, it is likely that technology is a part of your everyday life. 

The technological developments of our modern world have changed the way we live, buy, sell, invest, bank, and even buy everyday groceries. Convenience seems to be a motivator for people to use technology. According to Statista, by 2030 the number of internet-connected devices will be around 50 billion! There seems to be an intense desire to utilize technology as a means to gain efficiency and that desire is intensifying around the globe. Economies of scale have leveraged tech to reach new markets with supply chains spanning cultures and continents.

Technology itself is not evil and how humanity uses the internet of things (IoT) through multiculturalism is yet to manifest itself. Medical advancements, communication technologies, navigation, agribusiness, and warfare have all had major impacts from technologies. Not just convenience has driven technological advancements, but also humanity’s drive to thrive and succeed.  Of these achievements safety and protection, food, shelter and clothing are necessities of human’s hierarchy of needs and technologies have made it easier to satisfy survival. 

Whatever motivates you, or humanity as a whole, to utilize technology it is time to take a critical look into the future and learn how modernity of our world has become commonplace. These tech conveniences will influence new leaders, deceive the masses, and unveil military prowess unlike the world has ever seen before. 

Technology and Humans

Did you know that there appears to be modern technology mentioned in the Bible? Perhaps you recall the magnificent atomic power used during WWII. What if there is an even more powerful weapon yet to be shown in the future? Well, that’s part of the purpose of this article is to help identify the differences between technology as a tool and technology as a use for evil intentions. Technology has made such an impact on humankind’s ability to communicate, manufacture goods, and build astonishing things. Some of these accomplishments hardly seemed possible even just a decade ago. It may even feel that we could not exist without technology’s gratifying solutions to so many of our problems. Like computational skills in science and engineering. Imagine having to perform complex calculations nowadays without the assistance of a central processing unit commonly found in even a desktop calculator.

With the development of technology, a new world of exploration, consumerism, and military conquest has become the standard by which to measure success and power. Technology has become a kind of modern-day gold rush for the financial investor too. Emotions are powerful for folks who want to cash in on the allure of tech stocks even though tech stocks are riskier (Kim, K., Mithas, S., & Kimbrough, M. 2017).

There are numerous ways that technology has become part of our lives. Just take a moment to reflect: banking, finance, transit, running water, electricity, crop production and our healthcare. Our way of life has become dependent on technology. Not to suggest that this is wrong, it is merely a fact. 

Is it only because of our demands for efficiency that technology has taken hold? Is it to simplify and ease life’s burdensome tasks? Technologies that exist now seem fundamental to humankind’s existence. But, before we get too far ahead in analyzing these fundamentals, let us reflect back on technologies that were developed years ago, and then to the present.

A few Technological Milestones

• 3500 BCE – the wheel (Invention of the Wheel)
• 1769 – Steam Powered self-propelled road carriage (Library of Congress)
• 1835 – Reproducing images through photography (Newhall, 2020).
• 1865 – Metallurgical processes produced better quality steel (Steel Fabrication Services), (Schifman, 2018).
• 1886 – Vehicle powered by gasoline (Daimler)
• 1877 – Recording sound (National Park Service)
• 1957 – Artificial Intelligence, or AI, first researched (Anyoha, 2017)
• 1959 – Unimate #001 industrial robotic arm (Joseph Engelberger)
• 1981 – 3D printing (Hahn, 2018)
• 1989 – Big Data, generally referred to as it is known today (Bernard, 2015)
• 1991 – Digital Ledger Technology (Yun, 2018)
• 1992 – Augmented reality, USAF Armstrong’s Research Lab by Louis Rosenberg in 1992 (Interaction Design Foundation, n.d.)
• 1994 – GPS guidance for agricultural equipment (Marsh, 2018)
• 1997 – Artificial intelligence from IBM used to defeat grand chess master (Anyoha, 2017)
• 2007 – Apple iPhone introduced (Apple)
• 2009 – Bitcoin first mined (Yun, 2018)

This brief overview of some technological advancements in the course of humankind demonstrates a curiosity to develop things that either enhance or bring efficiency to our existence. Take for example, an article that was written by a computer. GPT-3 is OpenAI’s language generator.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/sep/08/robot-wrote-this-article-gpt-3

This op-ed article was generally written by artificial intelligence. Although the computer was given specific parameters and human guidance from its programmers, it is an interesting article to read as the computer sources information to write a response to its problem.

The history of technology is vast and how the curiosity of the human mind inspires us to develop new things. Even King Solomon recognized this when he wrote, “Everything is boring, so boring that you don’t even want to talk about it. Words come again and again to our ears, but we never hear enough, nor can we ever really see all we want to see.” (Ecclesiastes 1:8)

The Biblical Prophecy in Revelation

What does the future hold for humanity and technology? Biblical prophecy recorded by the Apostle John after receiving the information from an Angel is brought to light in this context as we learn about the history of humankind’s interest in technological advancements. Governments have used technology to win wars and as a means to exert power. It is not unreasonable to interpret the biblical passages written in the book of Revelation as prophetic insight to a future government that will also utilize technology for power and economic control.

Very simply, a beast is a governmental concept with ruling leadership over a geographic area. The Bible prophecy in the book of Revelation gives us specific details about a government, or a beast, that will rule in the future. Through crafty influence, he will utilize something that will cause the world to be awestruck. In fact, the bible book of Revelation calls it “fire from heaven.”

In particular, Revelation chapter 13 describes this situation and explains that people will be so moved by the power of the beast that they will even say, “who can make war with the beast?” While this may seem a little far-fetched, or perhaps like a sci-fi movie; it is not. The prophecy of the bible gives indication of a future time when a government will have a leader known as the “little horn” and this individual will be given the opportunity to lead a government through the demonstration of a weapon unlike the world has ever seen. 

“And he doeth great wonders, so that he maketh fire come down from heaven on the earth in the sight of men, And deceiveth them that dwell on the earth by the means of those miracles which he had power to do…” (Revelation 13:13, 14)

Scripture	Possible Indication of Technology
Revelation 13:13	Fire out of heaven
Revelation 13:15	Image speaks
Revelation 13:16, 17	Causes all to receive a mark in right hand or forehead

 

References

A tribute to Joseph Engleberger, the father of robotics. Retrieved on June 19, 2021 from
https://www.automate.org/a3-content/joseph-engelberger-timeline

Apple Newsroom. January 9, 2007. Apple reinvents the iPhone. Apple. Retrieved from
https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2007/01/09Apple-Reinvents-the-Phone-with-iPhone/

Anyoha, Rockwell. (2017, August 28) The History of Artificial Intelligence. Harvard University, The graduate school of arts and sciences. Retrieved from https://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2017/history-artificial-intelligence/

Daimler. (n.d.). Retrieved from
https://www.daimler.com/company/tradition/company-history/1885-1886.html

Haynes, Trevor. (2018, May 1). Dopamine, Smartphones & You: A battle for your time
https://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2018/dopamine-smartphones-battle-time/

Hahn, Brooke. (2018, February 6). History of 3D Printing. Retrieved from
https://me3d.com.au/2018/history-of-3d-printing/

Interaction Design Foundation. (n.d.). Augmented Reality – The Past, The Present and The Future. Retrieved from
https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/augmented-reality-the-past-the-present-and-the-future

Invention of the Wheel. 10000 years of economy. Retrieved from
https://www.citeco.fr/10000-years-history-economics/

Kim, K., Mithas, S., & Kimbrough, M. (2017). Information Technology Investments and Firm Risk across Industries: Evidence from the Bond Market. MIS Quarterly, 41(4), 1347-15-A13.

Library of Congress. (n.d.). Retrieved from
https://www.loc.gov/everyday-mysteries/item/who-invented-the-automobile/

Lionel Sujay Vailshery, Jan 22, 2021. Number of internet of things (IoT) connected devices worldwide in 2018, 2025 and 2030. Statista. Retrieved from
https://www.statista.com/statistics/802690/worldwide-connected-devices-by-access-technology/

Marr, Bernard. (2015, February 25). A brief history of big data everyone should read. World Economic Forum. Retrieved from
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2015/02/a-brief-history-of-big-data-everyone-should-read/

Marsh, Allison. (2018, February 28). John Deere and the birth of precision agriculture. Retrieved from
https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-history/silicon-revolution/john-deere-and-the-birth-of-precision-agriculture

National Park Service. (n.d.). The Origins of Sound Recording.  Retrieved from
https://www.nps.gov/edis/learn/historyculture/origins-of-sound-recording.htm

Newhall, B. , Gernsheim, . Helmut Erich Robert , Rosenblum, . Naomi and Grundberg, . Andy (2020, December 3). History of photography. Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/technology/photography

Schifman, Jonathan. (2018, July 9). The entire history of steel. Popular Mechanics. Retrieved from
https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/infrastructure/a20722505/history-of-steel/

Steel Fabrication Services. (2017, January 4). Retrieved from
https://steelfabservices.com.au/who-invented-steel-a-look-at-the-timeline-of-steel-production/

Yun, Yohan. (2018, September 6). Before Blockchain, There Was Distributed Ledger Technology. Retrieved from
https://medium.com/blockstreethq/before-blockchain-there-was-distributed-ledger-technology-319d0295f011